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THREE     VILLAGES 


THREE   VILLAGES 


BY 


W.    D.     HOWELLS 

AUTHOR     OK 
A    MODERN    INSTANCE,"     "  DK.     BREEN's    PRACTICE,"     ETC. 


BOSTON 

JAMES   R.    OS( ;<><>!)    AM)    COMPANY 
1884 


Copyright,  1884, 
BY    W.    D.    H DWELLS. 


All  right--   reserved. 


Jilnt'tictsitg  Press : 

JOHN    WILSON    AND    SON,    CA.MBRIDGI 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

LEXINGTON    ..............      ll 


SHIRLEY 
GNADENHUTTEN 


LEXINGTON. 


LEXINGTON.1 


r  I^HE  Bostonian  spring  being  more  than  usu- 
.ally  embittered  against  mankind  the  year 
1882,  we  left  our  quarters  in  town  very  early,  and 
went  to  pass  the  month  of  May  in  the  pretty  and 
historic  village  of  Lexington.  It  lies  ten  or  twelve 
miles  inland;  it  is  not  only  a  little  beyond  the 
worst  of  the  east  wind,  but  is  just  a  little  too  far 
from  Boston  to  be  strictly  suburban  in  aspect; 
and~thanks  chiefly  to  an  absence  of  water-power 
(a  clear  brown  brook,  that  you  may  anywhere 
jump  across,  idles  through  the  pastures  unmo 
lested  by  a  mill-wheel),  Lexington  has  not  yet 
been  overtaken  by  the  unpicturesque  prosperity 
which  has  befallen  so  many  New  England  villages. 

1  Reprinted  from  "Longman's  (London)  Magazine." 


12  THREE    VILLAGES. 

It  has  no  manufactures  of  any  sort,  neither  shoes 
nor  cotton,  nor  boxes,  nor  barrels,  nor  watches, 
nor  furniture ;  it  is  still  a  farming-town,  such  as 
you  find  in  the  Massachusetts  or  New  Hamp 
shire  hills,  and  is  not  yet  a  market-gardening  town 
like  those  which  lie  nearer  the  city.  The  ances 
tral  meadows  are  still  mown  by  the  great-great 
grandchildren  of  those  who  cleared  them  of  the 
primeval  forest,  and  who,  having  begun  to  build 
into  fences  and  bury  in  the  earth  the  granite  bowl 
ders  plentifully  bestrewing  its  surface,  invented 
rather  than  discovered  their  reluctant  fertility. 
In  many  parts  of  New  England  the  Western  jokes 
about  sharpening  the  sheep's  noses  for  their 
greater  convenience  in  getting  at  the  herbage 
between  the  rocks,  and  about  firing  the  seed-corn 
into  the  ground  with  a  shot-gun,  do  not  seem 
so  grotesquely  imaginative.  More  than  once  at 
nightfall,  as  I  drove  along  country  roads,  the  flocks 
and  herds,  lying  under  the  orchard  trees,  have 
turned  on  nearer  inspection  to  companies  of 
bowlders;  in  the  hill  towns  I  have  seen  stone 


LEXINGTON.  13 

walls  six  feet  wide,  titanic  barriers  thrown  up  in 
the  farmer's  despair  of  otherwise  getting  rid  of  the 
stones  scattered  over  his  fields  ;  and  these  gifts  of 
the  glacial  period  are  often  interred  by  the  cord 
in  pits  dug  for  the  purpose.  It  is  said  that  the  soil 
thus  twice  conquered  from  the  wilderness  is  very 
rich  and  strong,  and  Lexington  was  by  no  means 
so  barren  originally  as  some  other  towns ;  but 
its  fertility  must  once  have  been  greater  than  it 
now  is,  or  else  people  must  once  have  been 
satisfied  with  less  fertility  to  the  acre  than  con 
tents  them  at  present,  for  I  could  not  see  any  agri 
cultural  reason  why  Lexington  should  first  have 
been  known  as  Cambridge  Farms.  Doubtless  the 
name  did  not  imply  that  it  was  the  fittest  part  of 
the  township  for  farming ;  Beverly  Farms  and 
Salem  Farms  and  Cambridge  Farms  must  have 
all  been  so  called  because  they  were  hamlets 
remote  from  the  principal  village.  At  any  rate 
Lexington  once  formed  part  of  our  university 
town,  but  was  set  off  long  before  the  revolutionary 
days  in  which  it  achieved  a  separate  celebrity. 


14  THREE    VILLAGES. 

In  New  England  the  "  town "  is  the  town 
ship,  and  there  are  some  "  towns  "  in  which  there 
is  no  village  at  all;  but  at  Lexington  there  was 
early  a  little  grouping  of  houses ;  and  for  two 
hundred  and  fifty  years  the  local  feeling  has  been 
growing  more  and  more  intense,  until  it  can  be 
said  at  last  to  be  now  somewhat  larger  than  the 
place.  This  is  not  an  uncommon  result ;  as  Dr. 
Holmes  has  remarked,  American  cities  and  vil 
lages  all  like  to  think  of  themselves  as  the  "  good 
old"  this  and  that;  but  at  Lexington  more  than 
anywhere  else  out  of  Italy  I  felt  that  the  village 
was  to  its  people  t\\Q  p atria.  With  us  the  great 
Republic  is  repeated  and  multiplied  in  several 
smaller  and  diminishing  republican  governments, 
each  subordinate  to  the  larger,  all  over  the  land ; 
and  ever  since  its  separation  from  Cambridge, 
Lexington  has,  like  other  New  England  towns, 
had  its  little  autonomy.  Twice  a  year  the  citizens 
convene  and  legislate  in  town  meetings ;  and 
three  Selectmen  annually  chosen  see  that  the 
popular  will  is  carried  out  and  transact  the  whole 


LEXINGTON.  15 

business  of  the  town  government.  This  micro 
cosm  of  democracy  is  the  more  interesting  in 
Lexington  because  it  is  in  many  things  an  image 
of  what  the  New  England  town  was  a  hundred 
years  ago,  —  a  sufficiently  remote  antiquity  with 
us.  The  Irish  have  their  foothold  there  as  every 
where  ;  but  they  have  not  acquired  much  land  \ 
and  though  they  remain  faithful  Catholics,  they 
have  Americanized  in  such  degree  that  it  is  hard 
to  know  some  of  them  from  ourselves  in  their 
slouching  and  nasal  speech.  As  for  the  Cana 
dian  French,  who  abound  in  the  valley  of  the 
Connecticut,  and  in  all  the  factory  towns,  I  saw 
none  of  them  in  Lexington,  and  there  are  no 
Germans. 

It  is  because  of  the  typically  New  England 
character  of  Lexington  village,  as  well  as  its  his 
torical  note,  that  I  ask  English  readers  to  be 
interested  in  it ;  and  as  we  Americans  are  some 
times  grieved  by  our  cousins'  imperfect  recol 
lection  of  family  troubles,  I  make  haste  to  re 
mind  them  that  at  Lexington  the  first  blood  was 


1 6  THREE   VILLAGES. 

shed  in  the  war  of  American  Independence.  It 
has  a  powerful  hold  upon  the  American  imagina 
tion  for  this  reason  ;  it  has  therefore  overloaded 
the  gazetteer  with  namesakes  in  every  part  of 
the  Union,  and  its  celebrity  is  chief  part  of  the 
first  historical  knowledge  imparted  to  American 
school-boys.  But  the  village  has  such  a  charm 
for  me  from  its  actual  loveliness  and  quaintness, 
that  I  should  be  sorry  to  bring  that  bloody 
spectre  of  the  past  into  the  foreground  of  any 
picture,  and  I  shall  blink  it  as  long  as  I  can. 

It  was  a  shrewish  afternoon  late  in  April  when 
we  arrived  from  Boston  at  the  odd  but  very 
pleasant  hotel  where  we  spent  our  month  of  May. 
The  season  was  very  dry,  and  the  bare  landscape 
showed  scarce  a  sign  of  spring.  At  that  time 
there  is  usually  a  half-scared,  experimental-look 
ing  verdure  on  our  winter-beaten  fields ;  but 
except  where  a  forlorn  hope  of  grass  cowered  in 
some  damp  hollow,  the  meadows  were  now  as 
brown  and  haggard  in  aspect  as  they  are  when 
the  great  snows  leave  them  in  mid-March,  and 


LEXINGTON.  17 

they  lie  gaunt  and  wasted  under  a  high,  vast  blue 
sky,  full  of  an  ironical  glitter  of  sunshine.  The 
wind  was  sharp,  and  for  many  weary  weeks  yet 
there  would  be  no  buds  on  the  elms  that  creaked 
overhead  along  the  village  street. 

Further  north,  in  Maine  and  Canada,  the  spring 
comes  with  a  bound  after  the  thaw ;  but  the  re 
gion  of  Boston  seems  to  me  the  battle-ground 
of  all  the  seasons  when  the  spring  is  nominally 
in  possession.  On  the  i8th  of  May  this  year  we 
had  a  soft,  sunny  morning,  which  clouded  under 
an  east  wind ;  a  cold  rain  set  in  before  noon, 
with  hail ;  it  snowed  the  greater  part  of  the  after 
noon,  and  we  had  an  Italian  sunset  to  the  sing 
ing  of  the  robins.  This  was  excessive ;  but 
usually  after  the  first  relenting  days  the  winter 
returns,  and  whips  the  fields  with  sleet  and  snow, 
storm  after  storm ;  and  this  martyrdom  follows 
upon  a  succession  of  frosts  and  thaws,  which 
began  before  Thanksgiving  in  November.  Finally 
the  east  wind  comes  in,  fretting  the  nerves  and 
chilling  the  marrow,  throughout  April  and  May ; 


1 8  THREE    VILLAGES. 

even  when  it  does  not  blow  it  remains  in  the  air, 
a  sentiment  of  icebergs  and  freezing  sea.  It  is 
worst,  of  course,  on  the  shore,  and  delicate 
people  who  cannot  live  in  it  there  are  sent  to 
Lexington,  and  thrive.  The  air  is  very  dry  and 
pure,  and  that  is  perhaps  the  reason  why  even 
the  east  wind  is  tolerable.  Lexington  Common, 
they  say,  is  as  high  as  the  top  of  Bunker  Hill 
Monument  in  Boston  ;  and  the  locomotive  pants 
with  difficulty  up  the  heavy  grade  of  the  road 
near  the  village.  Perhaps  there  is  something  in 
the  grouping  of  the  low  hills  —  in  the  embrace 
of  which  the  village  lies  on  an  ample  plain  — 
that  gives  it  peculiar  shelter;  it  is  certain  that 
beyond  the  eastern  range  there  is  practically 
another  climate.  This  is  not  saying  that  the 
winter  is  not  long  and  dreary  there ;  the  snows 
lie  deep  in  the  hollows  of  those  hills  for  months, 
and  clog  the  long  street  on  which  the  village 
houses  are  chiefly  set. 

Streets  branch  off  from  this  thoroughfare  to 
the  right  and  left;  but  it  is  the   newer   houses 


LEXINGTON.  19 

which  are  built  on  these,  and  the  more  char 
acteristic  dwellings,  as  well  as  the  old-fashioned 
shops,  face  the  westward  road  along  which  Ma 
jor  Pitcairne's  red-coats  marched  in  the  early 
April  morning  a  hundred  years  ago  to  destroy 
the  Provincial  stores  at  Concord.  Here  and 
there  before  you  reach  the  village  is  a  large  old 
mansion  rambling  with  successive  outhouses  a 
hundred  feet  back  from  the  road  or  beside  it, 
all  the  buildings  under  one  roof,  and  having  a 
comfortable  unity  and  snugness ;  but  the  dwell 
ings  in  the  village  are  small  and  very  simple, 
generally  of  but  two  stories,  and  placed  each  in 
its  separate  little  plot  of  ground.  Where  they 
pretend  to  the  dignity  of  mansions,  they  stand 

"  Somewhat  back  from  the  village  street," 

like  the  old-fashioned  country-seat  in  Long 
fellow's  poem,  and  have  stately  elms  and  burly 
maples  about  them  ;  but  they  are  mostly  set  close 
upon  the  road,  as  seems  to  have  been  everywhere 
the  early  custom  in  New  England.  They  are 


20  THREE    VILLAGES. 

all  of  wood,  —  there  are  but  two  brick  buildings 
in  Lexington,  —  and  here  and  there  one  is  still 
painted  saffron,  with  Paris-green  shutters  and 
white  window  casings,  —  the  color  of  Long 
fellow's  house  and  the  other  colonial  houses  in 
Cambridge.  When  the  paint  is  not  too  freshly 
renewed,  they  have  a  suggestion  of  antiquity 
which  is  pleasing  and  satisfactory  in  so  new  a 
world  as  ours.  There  is  no  attempt  at  ornamen 
tation  in  these  unassuming  houses  at  Lexington  ; 
that  is  left  to  the  later  carpentry  which  has  pro 
duced  on  the  intersecting  streets  various  ex 
amples,  in  one  story  and  a  half,  of  the  mansard 
architecture  so  popular  in  our  wood-built  sub 
urbs.  There  is  also  at  one  point  of  the  principal 
street  a  wooden  "  block,"  in  emulation  of  the 
conventional  American  city  block  of  brick  or 
stone ;  but  otherwise  Lexington  has  escaped  the 
ravages  alike  of  "tasliness"  and  of  enterprise, 
and  is  as  plain  and  sober  a  little  town  as  it  was 
fifty  years  ago.  There  are  old-fashioned  shops 
in  rows,  quite  different  from  the  "  block,"  with 


LEXINGTON.  21 

wooden  awnings  to  shelter  their  doorways,  and 
with  well-gnawed  rails  and  horse-posts  before 
them  •  there  is  an  old  tavern  dating  from  the 
days  when  all  the  transportation  was  by  stage 
and  wagon  along  the  good  hard  roads ;  there 
are  several  churches  of  a  decent  and  wholesome 
ugliness ;  and  there  are  everywhere  trees  and 
grass  and  vines  and  flowers.  The  village  is  con 
scientiously  clean ;  but  except  in  midsummer 
the  English  reader  must  imagine  a  bareness  im 
possible  in  an  English  hamlet.  We  have  no 
evergreen  vines ;  the  spruces  and  firs  which  we 
plant  about  our  houses  only  emphasize  the  naked 
ness  of  all  the  other  trees  in  winter ;  in  the  clear, 
cold  air  the  landscape  is  as  blank  and  open  as 
a  good  conscience.  The  village,  when  the  leaves 
fall,  will  be  honestly  of  whatever  color  it  is 
painted,  and  its  outlines  will  be  as  destitute  of 
"atmosphere"  as  if  they  were  in  the  moon. 
There  is  no  soft  discoloration  of  decay  in  roof 
or  wall ;  at  the  best  you  will  have  a  weather- 
beaten  gray. 


22  THREE    VILLAGES. 

Lexington  has  a  High-School  house  of  wood 
upon  the  model  of  a  Grecian  temple ;  but  the 
principal  public  building  is  the  Town  Hall,  a 
shapely  structure  of  brick,  which  has  been  put 
up  within  the  last  five  or  six  years,  and  which 
unites  under  one  roof  a  hall  for  town  meetings, 
elections,  and  all  sorts  of  civic,  social,  and  ar 
tistic  entertainments,  the  town  offices,  and  the 
free  town  library.  The  number  of  books  is 
uncommonly  large  and  exceedingly  well  chosen, 
and  the  collection  is  the  gift  of  a  lady  of  the 
place.  The  library  is  named  after  her,  but  it  is 
piously  dedicated  in  an  inscription  over  the  door 
to  the  men  of  Lexington  who  fell  in  the  first 
battle  with  the  British  in  1775,  and  in  the  many 
fields  of  our  late  civil  war.  Statues  of  John 
Hancock  and  Sam  Adams,  the  patriots  who  had 
fled  from  arrest  in  Boston,  and  were  in  hiding 
at  Lexington  the  night  before  the  affair  of  1775, 
occupy  niches  in  the  rotunda  from  which  the 
library  opens,  and  confront  figures  of  a  pro 
vincial  Minute-Man  and  of  a  national  volunteer 


LEXINGTON.  23 

beside  the  door.  Three  days  in  the  week  the 
library  is  open  from  one  till  nine  o'clock,  and 
then  there  is  a  continual  coining  and  going  of 
the  villagers  on  foot,  and  the  neighboring  farmer- 
folks  in  buggies  and  carryalls.  I  noticed  that 
these  frequenters  of  the  library,  who  thronged 
the  reading-room,  and  kept  the  young  lady  at 
the  desk  incessantly  busy  recording  the  books 
they  borrowed  and  returned,  were  mostly  young 
people  and  mostly  women.  The  women,  in 
fact,  are  the  miscellaneous  readers  in  our  coun 
try  ;  they  make  or  leave  unmade  most  literary 
reputations ;  and  I  believe  that  it  is  usually  by 
their  advice  when  their  work-worn  fathers  and 
husbands  turn  from  their  newspapers  to  the 
doubtful  pleasure  of  a  book.  This  is  the  case 
alike  in  city  and  country  as  regards  lighter  lit 
erature  ;  and  in  small  towns  these  devourers  of 
novels  and  travels  and  magazines  read  so  close 
to  the  bone,  that  sometimes  being  brought  per 
sonally  to  book  for  my  intentions  in  this  or  that 
passage,  I  have  preferred  to  adopt  their  own 


24  THREE    VILLAGES. 

interpretations ;  and  when  this  copy  of  "  Long 
man's  Magazine  "  is  laid  upon  the  table  of  the 
town  library  at  Lexington,  I  am  aware  that  I 
shall  not  be  safe  from  my  readers  in  any  tortuous 
subtlety  of  phrase,  but  that  they  will  search  me 
out  to  the  finest  meaning  of  my  commas,  and 
the  last  insinuation  of  my  semicolons.  But  I 
have  a  good  conscience  and  I  am  not  afraid. 

Some  friends,  who  compassionated  the  ex 
tremity  of  an  author  with  an  unfinished  novel 
on  his  hands  in  the  penetrating  disquiet  of  a 
country  hotel,  lent  me  the  keys  to  the  Town 
Hall,  and  I  had  the  library  to  myself  on  the  days 
when  it  was  not  open  to  the  public,  and  wrote 
there  every  morning  amid  the  books,  and  the 
memorials  of  Lexington's  great  day,  and  every 
sort  of  colonial  bric-a-brac.  On  one  side  of 
the  door  was  the  gun  carried  by  a  Provincial 
(whose  name  I  read  whenever  I  lifted  my  eyes 
from  my  work,  and  now  marvel  that  I  should 
have  forgotten)  during  the  fight,  and  which 
being  "brought  back  from  Concord  busted," 


LEXINGTON,  25 

was  thriftily  sawed  off  just  short  of  the  fracture 
and  afterwards  used  by  his  descendants ;  on  the 
other  side  was  a  musket  taken  from  the  body 
of  a  British  soldier  who  fell  in  the  •  retreat ;  the 
sign  of  the  old  Monroe  Tavern,  where  Earl 
Percy  made  his  headquarters  when  he  came  out 
to  support  Major  Pitcairne's  men,  swung  from 
the  ceiling  near  these  trophies ;  in  glass  cases 
on  my  right  were  collections  of  smaller  relics, 
including  shot  from  Percy's  cannon,  the  tongue 
of  the  bell  that  called  the  villagers  from  their 
slumbers  the  night  before  the  attack ;  the  pistols, 
richly  chased  and  mounted,  from  which  Pitcairne 
fired  the  first  bullet  in  the  war  that  made  us  two 
peoples ;  the  hanger  worn  by  the  sexton  when 
he  went  to  light  the  signal  lantern  for  Paul 
Revere  in  the  belfry  of  the  Old  North  Church  in 
Boston,  and  sent  him  galloping  out  on  his  mid 
night  ride  through  the  sleeping  land  with  the 
news  that  the  King's  troops  had  begun  their 
march  on  Concord ;  the  broadside  issued  in  the 
British  interest,  giving  an  account  of  the  day's 


26  THREE    VILLAGES. 

fight  •  with  divers  shoe-buckles,  rings,  knives, 
platters,  and  profiles  cut  out  of  black  paper, 
belonging  to  the  colonial  period.  No  motive  of 
patriotism  shall  induce  me  to  represent  these 
collections  as  very  rich,  or  in  themselves  very 
interesting,  and  I  am  aware  that  I  cannot  give 
them  great  adventitious  importance  by  grouping 
them  with  the  rude  writing-desk  of  one  of  the 
old  Puritan  ministers  of  Lexington,  or  the  foot- 
stove  which  one  of  his  congregation  probably 
carried  to  meeting  and  warmed  his  poor  feet 
with  while  he  thawed  his  imagination  at  the 
penal  fires  painted  as  the  last  end  of  sinners  in 
the  sermon ;  the  sincere  home-made  lantern  of 
a  later  date,  and  the  spinning-wheel  of  an  uncer 
tain  epoch  do  not  commend  themselves  to  me 
as  much  more  hopeful  material  for  an  effective 
picture.  But  all  the  more  pathetic  from  their 
paucity  did  I  find  these  few  and  simple  records 
of  the  hard,  laborious  past  of  the  little  town, 
which  flowered  after  a  century's  toil  and  priva 
tion  into  an  hour  of  supreme  heroism.  For 


LEXINGTON.  27 

whatever  may  be  the  several  minds  of  my  readers 
and  myself  concerning  their  right,  there  can  be 
no  question  between  us  that  it  was  sublime  for 
forty  unwarlike  farmers  to  stand  up  and  take  the 
fire  of  six  hundred  disciplined  troops  in  defence 
of  what  they  believed  their  right :  it  was  English 
to  do  that,  it  was  American,  and  these  plain 
martyr-folk  were  both.  I  own  that  I  sympa 
thized  with  the  piety  that  has  treasured  every 
relic  connected,  however  remotely,  with  that 
time ;  and  that  I  took  an  increasing  pleasure 
in  showing  off  the  trophies  to  such  comers  as 
tried  the  library  door  when  nobody  had  any 
right  there  but  myself.  I  was  quite  master  to 
let  them  in  or  not,  but  I  always  opened,  and 
waited  for  them  to  overcome  their  polite  re 
luctance  to  disturb  me  at  my  writing.  Their 
questions  succeeded  upon  a  proper  interval  of 
fidgeting  and  whispering,  and  then  I 'confirmed 
orally  all  the  written  statements  of  the  placards 
on  the  objects,  and  found  my  account  in  listen 
ing  to  the  laudable  endeavors  of  my  visitors  to 


28  THREE    VILLAGES. 

connect  their  family  history  somehow  with  them. 
They  were  people  of  all  ages  and  conditions ; 
but  they  all  had  these  facts  by  heart,  and  were 
proud  of  them,  though  with  a  pride  unqualified 
by  any  foolish  rancor.  Most  of  all  they  were 
interested  in  the  portrait  of  a  young  and  hand 
some  British  officer  in  the  uniform  of  the  last 
century,  whose  sensitive  face  looks  down  from 
the  library  wall  upon  the  records  of  the  fight ; 
and  when  I  said  that  this  was  a  portrait  of  Earl 
Percy,  who  commanded  the  British  artillery,  and 
explained  (as  I  am  afraid  I  have  not  the  right 
to  explain  fully  here)  how  it  came  to  be  given 
to  a  gentleman  of  Lexington  by  the  present 
Duke  of  Northumberland,  I  elicited  nothing  but 
praises  of  the  Earl's  good  looks  or  expressions 
of  satisfaction  that  his  portrait  should  be  there. 
No  one  apparently  regarded  him  as  out  of  sym 
pathy  with  themselves,  and  I  believe  indeed 
that  this  generous  foe  acted  only  as  a  soldier  on 
that  day,  and  thought  the  measures  used  against 
the  Provincials  neither  wise  nor  just.  One  small 


LEXINGTON.  29 

boy  dwelt  upon  the  portrait  with  delays  that 
passed  even  the  patriotic  patience  of  the  cicerone, 
and  left  it  at  last  with  a  sigh  of  gratified  wonder. 
"  And  he  was  a  Britisher  !  "  I  give  his  language 
because,  contrary  to  the  experience  of  English 
observers  among  us,  I  never  heard  any  other 
American  say  Britisher ;  and  this  small  boy  was 
unmistakably  of  Irish  parentage. 

The  hotel  in  which  we  stayed  had  a  character 
istically  American  history,  though  it  could  not 
relate  itself  in  any  way  to  the  revolutionary  fame 
of  Lexington,  as  I  fancied  most  buildings  in 
Lexington  would  have  liked  to  do.  It  was  the 
house  put  up  by  the  Commonwealth  of  Massa 
chusetts  for  the  use  of  its  officers  and  agents  at 
the  Centennial  Exhibition  of  1876,  in  Philadel 
phia.  When  the  exhibition  ended,  the  house 
was  sold  to  a  citizen  of  Lexington,  who  took  it 
down  piecemeal,  and  brought  it  round  by  ship 
to  Boston,  whence  it  was  forwarded  by  rail  to 
Lexington,  and  reconstructed  there.  This  was 
a  simpler  and  easier  process  than  first  appears, 


30  THREE    VILLAGES. 

for  the  edifice  was  what  we  call  a  shell ;  it  was 
not  plastered,  and  the  several  portions  being 
marked  and  numbered  were  easily  put  together 
again.  I  believe  that  as  a  speculation  the  re 
moval  and  rebuilding  did  not  pay ;  but  when 
the  house  was  rendered  winter-proof,  and  heated 
with  steam,  it  became  at  once  the  most  pic 
turesque  and  delightful  country  hotel.  Out 
wardly  it  abounded  in  porches,  in  broken  roofs 
and  gables,  and  inwardly  it  was  huge  and  ram 
bling,  with  unexpected  staircases  and  passages, 
and  chambers  of  all  manner  of  shapes  and  sizes, 
lit  with  transoms  of  colored  glass ;  but  its  most 
charming  feature  was  the  vast  hall,  running  the 
whole  length  of  the  building  and  occupying  the 
greater  part  of  the  ground  floor.  You  entered 
this  from  the  street,  and  wandered  about  in  it  at 
will  till  some  one  in  authority  accidentally  dis 
covered  you  there,  and  having  directed  you  to 
the  hotel  register  lying  open  on  the  piano,  as 
signed  you  a  room ;  so  vague  and  slight  in 
everything  was  the  conformity  to  ordinary  hotel 


LEXINGTON.  31 

usage  in  that  pleasant  house.  It  was  like  arriving 
at  some  enchanted  castle  ;  or,  if  it  were  not,  so 
much  the  worse  for  the  enchanted  castle.  En 
chanted  castles,  or  even  those  of  another  sort, 
had  not  a  railroad,  as  our  hotel  had,  at  their 
postern  gate,  —  a  railroad  that  was  on  domestic 
and  almost  affectionate  terms  with  us  all.  When 
the  trains  came  scuffling  and  wheezing  up  the 
incline  from  Boston,  the  sound  was  as  if  the 
friendly  locomotive  were  mounting  the  back  stairs, 
and  might  be  expected  to  walk  in  without  cere 
mony,  and  sit  down  at  the  fire  like  any  other 
boarder.  We  could  see  the  trains  backing  and 
filling  at  the  station  as  we  sat  at  breakfast,  and 
such  of  us  as  were  going  to  town  could  time 
ourselves  to  the  last  half-minute,  and  count  upon 
some  sympathetic  delay  when  we  were  late. 
Saturday  evening,  the  trains  all  drew  in  with  the 
air  of  having  done  an  honest  week's  work,  and 
the  engines  having  run  their  empty  cars  up  the 
siding,  found  their  way  to  the  locomotive  house 
at  their  leisure,  as  if  they  were  going  to  wash  up 


32  THREE    VILLAGES. 

there  for  Sunday,  while  a  Sabbath  peace  settled 
with  the  nightfall  upon  the  village. 

I  dare  say  I  shall  not  be  able,  in  this  much- 
sewed  England,  to  make  it  plain  that  our  Lex 
ington  hotel  was  charming  almost  in  proportion 
to  the  wide  freedom  granted  every  comer  of 
taking  care  of  himself;  yet  it  was  largely  on 
account  of  this  rather  slipshod  ease  that  it  was 
so  pleasant  In  the  end  one  was  very  comforta 
ble  :  the  beds  were  good,  the  rooms  were  clean, 
the  table  was  plentiful ;  you  had  what  you  wanted 
if  you  would  take  the  trouble  to  get  it,  and  much 
more  than  half  the  time  it  was  got  for  you. 
Moreover,  you  were  brevetted  partner  in  the 
enterprise  with  a  hearty  good-will  that  could  not 
have  been  bought  for  money,  and  with  so  much 
amiability,  and  so  much  real  regard  for  your 
welfare,  that  you  must  have  been  a  very  extra 
ordinary  American  indeed  if  you  did  not  will 
ingly  accept  the  situation  as  you  found  it.  A 
fire  was  burning  all  the  month  of  May  in  the 
prodigious  fireplace  midway  of  the  hall  at  our 


LEXINGTON.  33 

hotel ;  and  if  neither  host  nor  servitor  came  after 
a  reasonable  time  to  receive  the  stranger,  some 
hospitable  boarder  rose  from  the  circle  about 
the  hearth,  and  welcomed  him  to  one  of  the 
great  Shaker  rocking-chairs  before  the  fire,  while 
he  went  in  search  of  the  housekeeper  or  hostler. 
The  fireplace  would  take  in  a  back-log  big 
enough  to  smoulder  and  inwardly  burn  for  days, 
and  it  had  a  stomach  for  the  largest  stumps 
from  the  neighboring  fields,  which  it  devoured 
together  with  all  blocks  and  fragments  too  tough 
for  the  axe  and  wedge.  Sometimes,  as  the  land 
lord  remarked,  there  was  more  wood  than  fire ; 
but  ordinarily  a  roaring  blaze  was  not  wanting, 
and  with  this,  and  the  elk's  head  and  antlers 
on  the  chimney-piece,  the  armor  (brought  home 
by  one  of  the  boarders  from  some  joust  with  a 
bric-a-brac  dealer  abroad)  on  the  opposite  wall, 
and  all  the  rude  gothic  of  the  architecture,  which 
showed  the  beams  and  rafters  as  in  a  Venetian 
palace,  we  had  very  little  difficulty  in  feeling 
baronial.  It  was  probably  a  mistaken  emotion  ; 
3 


34  THREE    VILLAGES. 

and  I  am  not  prepared  to  defend  its  genuineness 
against  all  comers.  The  ladies  used  to  bring  out 
their  sewing  or  knitting,  and  chat  round  the  fire  ; 
the  men  had  their  newspapers  and  cigars  ;  as  the 
evening  wore  on  there  was  whist  or  euchre  at 
the  tables ;  sometimes  people  from  the  outside 
world  dropped  in ;  and  if  you  went  down  late 
(as  hours  go  with  us  in  the  country),  you  were 
likely  to  find  the  landlord  and  his  brother  smok 
ing  before  the  fire  and  telling  stories  of  Lexing 
ton  as  they  remembered  it  when  boys.  They 
were  born  on  that  spot,  their  family  had  owned 
the  land  for  two  hundred  years,  and  they  loved 
their  native  place  with  a  tenderness  very  uncom 
mon  among  Americans.  I  remember  from  those 
drowsy  hours  many  stories,  as  of  the  frenzy  of  a 
family  cat  amidst  the  pyrotechnic  rejoicings  of 
a  Fourth  of  July,  and  the  unseemly  behavior 
of  a  Lexington  man's  horse,  who  brought  his 
owner  to  shame  before  a  Boston  audience  by 
backing  down  stairs  into  a  huckster's  cellar  in 
Dock  Square  ;  but  I  am  withheld  from  repeating 


LEXINGTON,  35 

them  here  by  that  English  scrupulosity  regarding 
the  facts  of  private  life  which  I  am  naturally 
anxious  to  emulate  in  writing  for  an  English 
magazine.  I  do  not  know  whether  I  am  bound 
by  the  same  extreme  of  civilization  not  to  speak 
of  the  old  lantern  which  the  landlord  sometimes 
showed  to  guests  of  a  very  exacting  patriotism 
as  the  very  lantern  which  Paul  Revere  carried 
on  his  midnight  ride  from  Boston  to  Concord. 
They  found  nothing  odd  in  the  suggestion  that 
he  should  have  carried  a  lantern,  and  no  hesita 
tion  in  receiving  the  relic  as  historical. 

The  hall  was  the  boarders'  drawing-room  when 
they  were  alone  ;  and  it  was  only  when  a  sleigh 
ing  party  drove  out  from  Boston  in  the  winter, 
or  a  bicycling  party  arrived  in  the  spring,  that 
they  reluctantly  abandoned  it  to  the  dancing, 
and  to  the  anguish  of  the  piano  which  must 
ensue  with  or  without  the  dancing.  Here  by 
day  as  well  as  by  night  there  was  easy  loitering 
and  talking  amongst  us,  as  if  we  were  all  guests 
in  the  house,  —  as  in  fact  we  practically  were ; 


36  THREE    VILLAGES. 

and  here  on  one  of  those  white,  white  Sunday 
mornings,  when  the  humid  warmth  bursts  from 
the  suddenly  open  portals  of  the  South,  and 
under  a  sky  all  sun,  every  bud  breaks  into  blos 
som  with  a  bee  in  its  heart,  and  the  whole  air 
quavers  and  tinkles  with  the  notes  of  bluebirds 
and  orioles,  our  languor  was  thrilled  with  the 
horror  of  the  murder  of  Lord  Frederick  Caven 
dish  and  Mr.  Burke  in  Dublin.  The  crime  was 
then  but  a  few  hours  old,  and  it  seemed  to  stain 
that  exquisite  Sabbath  purity  with  blood.  I 
think  that  throughout  America  we  all  felt  it 
personally  as  we  did  Garfield's  death,  and  that 
whether  we  hoped  or  whether  we  doubted  for 
Ireland,  we  were  alike  dismayed  at  the  cruel 
stupidity  of  the  deed.  The  feeling  of  the  hour 
comes  back  to  me  again  in  vivid  association  with 
the  sensuous  memory  of  that  peculiarly  American 
weather,  of  which  I  should  perhaps  try  in  vain 
to  give  a  definite  impression.  It  comes  after 
long  days  of  chilly  drought,  when  the  dust  flies 
in  the  bitter  east ;  overnight  the  wind  changes, 


LEXINGTON.  37 

a  warm  rain  falls,  which  dries  in  the  first  hours 
of  the  sun  climbing  a  lofty  sky,  absolutely  with 
out  cloud,  of  more  than  Italian  blueness,  and  of 
such  continental  vastness  as  roofed  the  first  home 
of  our  race  on  Asiatic  plains.  In  such  a  day 
there  is  compensation  for  all  that  has  gone 
before ;  the  grass  is  thickly  and  brightly  green ; 
the  cherry-trees  and  pear-trees  whiten  the  world  ; 
the  air  is  sweet  with  delicate  scents,  it  palpitates 
with  -song.  To-morrow  may  be  like  yesterday, 
but  to-day  is  heavenly  perfect. 

We  were  still  the  same  company  in  our  hotel, 
when  one  day  our  evening  paper  brought  us, 
fully  reprinted,  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold's  recent 
"  Word  about  America."  It  was  a  not  wholly 
flattering  word,  but  I  do  not  think  it  could  have 
been  more  amiably  received  if  it  had  been  so. 
The  good-will  of  the  writer  was  so  evident  that 
we  all  said  it  would  not  do  to  be  vexed  that  he 
seemed  not  very  well  informed;  the  Americans 
are  in  fact  so  used  to  having  their  ribs  walked 
over  by  foreigners  in  the  heaviest  boots  of  travel, 


38  THREE   VILLAGES. 

that  this  slippered  and  rhythmic  pace  was  like 
a  sort  of  Hawaiian  lomi-lomi  to  our  toughened 
sensibilities  ;  it  tickled,  it  lulled  us,  it  was  almost 
a  caress.  The  editor  of  our  paper  had  warned 
us  not  to  reject  what  truth  there  was  in  Mr. 
Arnold's  "Word,"  and  we  set  ourselves  duti 
fully  to  seek  it.  We  could  not  quite  maintain 
with  our  compatriot,  whose  declaration  seemed 
to  have  evoked  the  Word,  that  there  was  in  every 
little  American  town  a  circle  of  cultivated  people  ; 
at  the  most  we  could  assert  that  there  was  a 
circle  of  people  who  wished  they  were  cultivated, 
and  cordially  and  modestly  and  intelligently  ap 
preciated  cultivation ;  but  at  the  bottom  of  our 
hearts  we  were  aware  of  not  being  Murdstones, 
or  even  in  an  ill  sense  Methodists.  This  con 
ception  of  us  appeared  to  us  lamentably  mis 
taken  ;  we  could  not  so  readily  have  proved  that 
we  were  not  in  a  low  condition  from  the  national 
tendency  to  irreverent  humor ;  we  have  cer 
tainly  a  bad  habit  of  laughing  at  serious  things, 
even  our  critics ;  but  at  the  same  time  we  could 


LEXINGTON.  39 

not  see  how  we  could  be  so  generally  wanting 
in  sweetness  and  light,  and  yet  be  so  often  Mr. 
Arnold's  readers  and  admirers.  Given  English 
middle-class  Puritanism,  we  ought  logically  to 
have  been  what  he  imagines  us ;  the  camel  could 
not  complain  that  it  had  not  been  scientifically 
evolved  from  the  philosopher's  consciousness ; 
and  yet  it  felt  itself,  in  its  dumb  helplessness, 
to  be  quite  a  different  sort  of  beast.  I  suppose 
this  must  be  always  somewhat  the  case ;  and 
heaven  knows  how  the  ancient  Greeks  and  He 
brews  like  Mr.  Arnold's  notions  of  them.  I  have 
myself  attempted  to  say  things  of  the  English 
which  have  not  been  found  just  by  the  few  Eng 
lish  people  who  read  them,  and  in  fact  I  suppose 
it  would  be  better  to  let  the  writers  of  each  na 
tion  aggrieve  their  own.  I  shall  not,  therefore, 
presume  to  say  that  Mr.  Arnold  is  right  about 
the  English  middle  class ;  but  if  we  are  like 
what  he  conceives  of  them,  I  should  say  yes,  we 
are  perhaps  the  English  middle  class,  but  with 
the  lid  off.  This  appears  to  me  an  advantage. 


40  THREE   VILLAGES. 

At  any  rate  this  was  the  sum  of  the  talk  over 
Mr.  Arnold's  paper  among  the  boarders  of  the 
Massachusetts  House  in  Lexington.  It  was  a 
purely  fortuitous  assemblage  of  people,  such  as 
one  is  apt  to  encounter  at  summer  hotels  in 
New  England.  They  were  of  various  com 
plexions  as  regarded  creeds  and  callings;  but 
neither  their  creeds  nor  callings  appeared  to 
characterize  them ;  they  kept  their  individuali 
ties  free  and  apart  from  the  accidents  of  busi 
ness  and  belief,  in  a  way  that  I  own  I  should 
be  somewhat  at  a  loss  to  explain.  There  were 
Unitarians,  Episcopalians,  Swedenborgians,  Or 
thodox  Congregationalists,  and,  for  all  I  know, 
Baptists  among  them,  but  I  think  no  Methodists  ; 
and  of  that  numerous  and  respectable  sect  there 
happens  to  be  no  congregation  in  Lexington. 
There  is  a  Unitarian  church,  which  was  formerly 
the  prevailing  faith ;  the  Orthodox  church  is 
earnest  and  growing;  there  is  a  large  Irish 
Catholic  church ;  but  the  greatest  advance  has 
been  made  by  the  Baptists,  under  the  minis- 


LEXINGTON.  41 

trations  of  a  lay  preacher,  formerly  a  colonel  in 
the  Union  army,  who  has  lately  reconstituted 
that  body  out  of  very  perishing  fragments,  and 
made  it  strong  and  flourishing.  I  heard  it  said 
that  he  had  done  this  by  rendering  the  church 
"  attractive  to  young  people."  There  is  very 
little  religious  excitement  of  any  sort  in  New 
England,  now ;  the  church  in  small  places  be 
comes  more  and  more  a  social  affair ;  and  per 
haps  it  was  chiefly  in  the  social  way  that  the 
Baptist  body  was  rehabilitated  in  Lexington. 

It  was  our  good  fortune  to  be  there  on  Deco 
ration  Day,  the  anniversary  when  all  over  the 
country  the  Americans  of  both  sections  decorate 
with  flags  and  flowers  the  graves  of  those  who 
fell  in  the  Civil  War,  and  the  soldiers  who  have 
since  died.  In  the  cities  the  day  is  celebrated 
with  civic  pomp,  with  parades  of  militia  and 
steam  fire-engines ;  but  in  the  villages  its  ob 
servance  is  an  act  of  religion,  of  domestic  piety ; 
and  it  is  touching,  after  the  day  is  past,  to  see 
the  garlands  withering  in  the  lonely  country 


42  THREE    VILLAGES. 

graveyards,  and  the  little  flags  feebly  fluttering 
about  the  graves  till  the  weather  quite  wears 
them  away.  Every  year  the  graves  increase  in 
number  and  the  soldiers  are  fewer  and  fewer  who 
come  to  lay  the  flowers  on  them ;  and  it  is  in 
the  country  that  this  waste  of  life  is  most  sorrow 
fully  noticeable.  At  Lexington,  two  new  graves 
had  been  added  to  those  of  the  year  before,  and 
of  the  young  men  who  went  to  the  war  from 
the  town  only  a  score  of  middle-aging  veterans 
remained.  These  facts  were  touched  upon  in 
the  address  with  which  the  ceremonies  of  the 
day  were  closed  in  the  Town  Hall  at  night, 
and  the  sad  and  glorious  associations  of  the 
past  were  invoked  by  a  speaker  who  had  him 
self  been  part  of  those  great  events.  He  was 
now  the  Unitarian  minister  of  the  village,  and  he 
had  been  preceded  in  prayer  by  the  Orthodox 
Congregational  minister ;  the  gentleman,  by  the 
way,  through  whom  the  Duke  of  Northumber 
land  presented  Lord  Percy's  portrait  to  the  town. 
There  was  excellent  singing  by  a  choir  of  men's 


LEXINGTON.  43 

voices ;  and  for  the  rest  there  was  very  earnest 
attention  on  the  part  of  the  people  who  filled 
the  hall  to  overflowing.  The  audience  was  not 
of  unmixed  Yankee  race ;  the  Irish  quarter  of 
Lexington  was  duly  represented,  but  all  were 
one  in  a  sense  of  the  gravity  of  the  occasion,  and 
the  whole  assembly  was  subdued,  old  and  young 
alike,  to  a  Puritanic  seriousness  of  demeanor. 
It  is  sometimes  a  little  amusing  to  find  how 
aptly  the  Irish  settled  in  the  rural  communities 
of  New  England  take  on  the  prevailing  type  of 
manners  ;  they  are  perhaps,  with  the  Celtic  con 
ception  of  democracy,  that  "  one  man  is  as  good 
as  another  and  a  dale  better  too,"  a  little  more 
American  in  some  things  than  the  natives  them 
selves  ;  but  it  appears  to  be  their  ambition  to 
conform  as  closely  as  possible  to  our  social  ideal. 
The  imitation  is  by  no  means  superficial ;  they 
are  industrious  and  thrifty,  and  except  that  they 
unfailingly  vote  for  whatever  is  illiberal  and 
retrograde  in  politics,  they  are  not  bad  citizens 
in  such  communities,  whatever  they  are  in  the 


44  THREE    VILLAGES. 

larger  towns.  I  was  not  near  enough  to  the 
veterans  occupying  the  front  benches  to  see 
how  many  were  of  Irish  birth ;  but  it  is  known 
how  well  they  served  in  the  army ;  and  I  dare 
say  no  one  present  took  greater  satisfaction  in 
the  expressions  relating  the  second  war  for  free 
dom  to  the  part  Lexington  had  borne  in  the 
struggle  against  England.  The  Revolution  was 
remembered  in  the  special  decoration  of  the 
statues  of  Adams  and  Hancock  and  the  Minute- 
Man  with  wreaths  of  hemlock  and  pine,  which, 
in  a  season  that  denied  the  usual  profusion  of 
flowers,  did  duty  for  them  throughout  the  day. 

One  night  we  had  a  concert  in  the  Town  Hall, 
which  was  so  curiously  American  as  regards  the 
artists  that  I  wish  I  could  give  a  thoroughly 
intelligible  idea  of  the  affair.  They  were  all  of 
one  family,  —  father,  mother,  and  nine  children 
between  nineteen  and  five  years  old,  —  two  chil 
dren  younger  still  being  left  at  home  out  of 
regard  to  their  tender  age.  They  were  from 
utmost  Oregon,  and  they  had  gone  about  the 


LEXINGTON.  45 

whole  country,  singing  and  playing,  apparently 
ever  since  any  of  the  children  could  walk.  They 
had  visited  the  White  House  in  Washington, 
and  had  been  very  acceptable  everywhere  to 
Sunday  schools  and  scrupulous  pleasure-seekers 
because  of  the  edifying  character  of  their  enter 
tainments,  which  were  certainly  exemplary  from 
the  moral  side.  I  cannot  say  much  as  to  the 
artistic  quality  of  their  programme ;  it  com 
mended  itself  by  dealing  with  those  themes  of 
domestic  and  obituary  interest  in  which  our 
balladry  delights ;  it  was  varied  with  a  very  lit 
tle  very  modest  dancing,  and  sketches  of  infan 
tine  drama  ;  but  they  were  nevertheless  gifted 
people,  and  while  they  conformed  to  the  popu 
lar  taste  in  their  performances,  they  were  all 
working  hard  at  the  science  of  their  profession 
under  a  German  master.  They  stopped  at  our 
hotel,  and  we  had  the  advantage  of  seeing  them 
in  private  as  well  as  in  public,  and  of  witness 
ing  the  triumph  of  the  family  among  them 
over  the  temptations  of  their  difficult  and  haz- 


46  THREE    VILLAGES. 

ardous  experiment ;  the  young  people  were  quiet 
and  well-mannered ;  the  little  ones  far  less 
spoiled  than  might  have  been  expected  of  babes 
encored  several  times  every  night ;  and  there 
was  a  spirit  of  mutual  affection  and  of  discipline 
manifest  in  them  which  I  should  like  to  claim 
as  characteristic  of  the  American  family  under 
less  arduous  conditions. '  The  father  talked  freely 
of  his  theories  for  maintaining  a  home-life  in 
his  nomadic  tribe  ;  and  the  author  sojourning  in 
the  hotel  did  not  think  the  less  of  his  methods 
when  he  said  he  had  read  the  author's  books, 
and  introduced  his  children  as  versed  in  them. 
This  author  had  long  had  his  ideas  of  what  those 
novels,  those  travels,  those  unsalable  poems, 
those  intheatricable  dramas,  rightly  understood, 
might  do  for  mankind,  and  here.  .  .  . 

I  was  very  glad  that  the  Lexington  people  gave 
the  singing  and  playing  family  a  good  house,  and 
I  fancy  that  they  do  not  refuse  any  fit  occasions 
for  amusing  themselves.  The  young  men  seem 
not  to  go "  away  from  home  so  generally  as  they 


LEXINGTON.  47 

do  from  most  country  towns  in  New  England ; 
it  is  perhaps  because  their  pleasant  village  is  so 
near  the  city ;  at  any  rate  they  remain  at  home 
even  after  being  graduated  at  Harvard.  They 
have  sleigh-rides,  and  dances  at  the  Town  Hall 
during  the  winter ;  I  was  told  that  the  Lexing 
ton  "germans"  are  not  despised  by  the  under 
graduates  of  Cambridge ;  and  "  Oh,  I  tell  you," 
I  heard  it  said  by  one  of  themselves,  "  the  Lex 
ington  girls  have  a  good  time  !  "  In  the  sum 
mer  there  are  of  course  picnics,  and  of  late 
horseback-riding  has  come  greatly  into  vogue 
in  the  country  all  about  Boston.  The  rigors 
of  our  winters  and  summers  are  against  that 
pleasure,  and  hitherto  it  was  almost  unknown ; 
but  now,  thanks  largely  to  the  importation  of 
Texan  riding-horses,  it  is  especially  prevalent  at 
Lexington.  These  horses,  which  are  small,  are 
very  strong  and  tough,  and  they  look  like  little 
thoroughbreds.  Like  all  Southern  horses,  they 
are  broken  to  walk  very  rapidly,  and  they  have 
in  perfection  that  gait  which  in  the  Southwest  is 


48  THREE    VILLAGES. 

called  a  lope.  When  they  are  first  brought 
North  they  sell  for  prices  ranging  from  $40  to 
$100.  Their  popularity  has  revived  the  sport, 
almost  obsolete  in  the  North,  of  horse-racing  at 
Lexington,  where  I  once  saw  a  race  between 
gentlemen  riders,  which  had  apparently  called 
out  the  greater  part  of  the  population.  We 
drove  through  miles  of  the  small  pine  forest, 
which,  growing  up  all  over  New  England  on 
the  exhausted  lands,  gives  such  an  impression 
of  wildness ;  and  came  at  last  to  a  space  in  the 
woods  where  a  track  had  been  newly  laid  out 
in  the  white  birch  scrub,  or  newly  recovered 
from  it,  and  where  we  found  everything  pre 
pared  for  the  sport  in  due  form.  The  riders 
gave  us  all  the  gayety  of  jockey  dress,  as  well 
as  the  race,  for  our  money ;  the  ground  was 
thronged  with  carriages  and  buggies ;  there  was 
a  tally-ho  coach  which  had  been  driven  out 
from  Boston ;  and  I  went  about  bewildered  at 
this  transformation  of  my  poor  New  England, 
and  fearfully  hoping  there  was  nothing  wicked 


LEXINGTON.  49 

in  so  much  apparent  enjoyment  with  no  appar 
ent  useful  purpose,  till  I  heard  myself  indicated 
in  a  whisper  as  "  one  of  the  horsemen."  Then 
I  desperately  abandoned  myself  to  the  common 
dissipation,  for  it  was  idle  to  be  better  than 
one  seemed. 

These  Texan  horses,  which  are  not  quite  the 
mustangs  of  the  prairies,  are  ridden  with  high- 
pommelled,  wooden-stirruped  Mexican  saddles ; 
and  when  a  party  of  young  people  dashed  by 
the  hotel  in  the  twilight,  it  was  with  a  pictur- 
esqueness  which  the  pig-skin  of  Anglo-Saxon 
civilization  fails  to  impart  to  a  man.  But  let  me 
not  give  the  impression  of  mere  pleasure-taking 
on  the  part  of  these  cavaliers ;  they  were  stu 
dents  at  law  or  medicine,  or  they  were  young 
men  of  business  recreating  themselves  after  the 
close  application  of  a  day  in  town ;  by  and  by, 
when  they  were  married,  they  would  content 
themselves  with  their  cigars  and  their  news 
papers,  and  leave  others  to  ride  with  pretty  girls 
in  the  dusk  of  the  eyening,  or  chase  the  flying 
4 


50  THREE    VILLAGES. 

tennis-ball  on  the  whitewashed  lawn.  Except 
perhaps  at  Newport,  or  the  New  York  clubs,  one 
sees  few  men  of  leisure  with  us,  and  the  example 
of  these  few  is  not  one  to  make  the  Republic 
pine  for  that  leisure  class  which  the  Old  World 
finds  indispensable  to  its  government  and  refine 
ment.  Women  of  leisure  we  certainly  have ; 
they  distinguish  and  adorn  us  everywhere,  ad 
vancing  (as  we  understand)  the  standard  of  dress 
abroad,  and  absorbing  and  diffusing  ideas  of 
taste  and  culture  at  home.  Wherever  the  piano 
forte  penetrates,  lovely  woman  lifts  her  fingers 
from  the  needle,  the  broom-handle,  and  the 
washboard,  and  places  them  on  its  keys,  never 
again  to  be  restored  to  those  odious  implements  ; 
she  finds  that  she  has  a  mind,  and  she  makes 
her  husband  or  her  father  pay  for  it ;  she  begins 
to  have  aims,  to  draw,  to  model,  to  decorate, 
to  lecture,  and  to  render  herself  self-supporting 
by  every  expensive  device.  This  alone  is  enough 
to  keep  the  men  of  her  family  busy,  and  to  pre 
vent  the  commonwealth  from  lapsing  into  decay  ; 


LEXINGTON.  51 

the  civic  virtues  fall  naturally  to  the  care  of  the 
trained  patriots  who  are  "  inside  politics  "... 

I  perceive  too  late  that  by  an  infrangible  chain 
of  reasoning  I  have  been  proving  that  we  too  are 
governed  and  refined  by  a  leisure  class,  and  that 
there  is  only  the  trifling  difference  of  sex  between 
the  American  and  the  European  aristocracies.  At 
the  same  time  I  have  got  rather  far  away  from 
Lexington,  where  life  seemed  to  be  still  very 
unambitious  and  old-fashioned.  I  wish  I  could 
say  that  it  was  cheap ;  but  this  is  not  the  case 
in  the  suburbs  of  any  of  our  Atlantic  cities. 
House  rent  is  certainly  less,  but  the  railroad 
fares  and  the  expressman's  charges  go  far  to 
equalize  that  with  the  city  rate ;  about  Boston 
the  suburban  taxes  are  sometimes  greater  than 
the  city  taxes ;  provisions  and  service  are  a  little 
costlier,  and  unless  one  conforms  quite  strictly 
to  the  local  standard  of  simplicity,  one  is  apt  to 
live  quite  as  expensively  as  in  town.  It  would 
cost  as  much  to  live  with  the  same  ease  in  Lex 
ington  as  in  Boston ;  that  is  to  say,  a  third  more 


5*  THREE    VILLAGES. 

than  in  London.  But  one  is  not  obliged  to  live 
with  "ease"  there,  and  he  may  live  in  comfort 
for  a  reasonable  sum.  It  struck  me  that  the 
place  had  studied  convenience  scientifically,  and 
that  in  a  modest  way  it  was  entirely  sufficient  to 
itself,  with  its  good  schools,  its  admirable  library, 
its  well-kept  streets  and  roads  ;  its  sociable  little 
line  of  railroad  connecting  it  with  the  city  by  ten 
or  twelve  trains  a  day;  its  well-stocked  pro 
vision  stores,  and  its  variety  of  other  shops. 
There  cannot  be  many  more  than  a  thousand 
people  in  the  village,  including  the  Irish  hamlet 
by  the  railroad  side  ;  but  it  is  lighted  with  gas, 
and  they  are  talking  of  water-works.  I  dare  say 
they  will  soon  have  drainage  and  malaria. 

The  village  of  Lexington,  however,  is  not  one 
of  those  examples  of  rapid  growth  with  which 
we  like  to  astonish  the  world.  I  doubt  if  it  can 
be  more  than  twice  as  populous  as  when  a  hun 
dred  years  ago  it  became  the  scene  of  the  brief 
conflict  which  has  made  it  memorable.  Our 
hotel  fronted  the  road  along  which  the  King's 


LEXINGTON.  53 

troops  had  marched  in  the  twilight  of  the  morn 
ing  of  April  19,  1775,  and  on  which  they  re 
treated  in  the  afternoon.  The  common  where 
the  encounter  with  the  Provincials  took  place 
was  but  a  minute's  walk  away,  and  with  the  relics 
of  the  library  close  at  hand,  we  dwelt,  as  it  were, 
in  the  midst  of  heroic  memories.  One  pleasant 
forenoon,  when  the  May  had  remitted  its  worst 
rigors,  and  nature  was  making  the  most,  with 
birds  and  sunshine,  of  a  respite  from  the  east 
wind,  we  strolled  up  to  the  pretty  green,  and 
leaning  upon  the  rail  that  encloses  it,  listened 
to  the  story  of  the  fight  from  one  who  had  all 
but  been  present  in  his  careful  and  enthusiastic 
studies  of  its  details. 

The  green  is  an  irregular  triangle  fronted  by 
the  village  churches  and  dwellings,  and  the  his 
toric  fact  is  commemorated  by  a  rude  monument 
erected  at  the  close  of  the  last  century,  with  an 
inscription  by  the  minister  of  the  village  :  a  good 
man  who  seemed  to  have  learned  his  rhetoric 
from  the  French  Republic,  then  distributing 


54  THREE    VILLAGES. 

equality  and  fraternity  to  the  reluctant  peoples 
of  Europe  at  the  point  of  the  bayonet.  The 
stone  is  "  sacred  to  liberty,  independence,  and 
the  rights  of  man  ;  "  it  rehearses  in  swelling  terms 
the  wrongs  endured  from  British  tyranny  by  the 
colonists,  and  their  resort  to  arms.  "  The  con 
test  was  long,  bloody,  and  affecting :  righteous 
Heaven  approved  the  solemn  appeal,"  and  the 
sovereignty  of  the  States  was  the  final  conse 
quence.  The  great-grandchildren  of  those  who 
fell  there  look  from  their  windows  upon  the  con 
secrated  spot ;  not  far  up  a  street  to  the  north 
ward  the  house  yet  stands  in  which  Adams  and 
Hancock  were  hiding,  with  a  price  set  on  their 
heads  by  the  British  commandant  in  Boston, 
while  Major  Pitcairne's  troops  were  marching 
up  the  Concord  road ;  and  three  of  the  houses 
that  witnessed  the  bloodshed  on  the  green  seem 
to  be  still  strong  and  sound,  and  good  for 
another  hundred  years.  They  are  all  interesting 
as  specimens  of  the  early  village  architecture  of 
New  England,  and  one  is  especially  quaint  and 


LEXINGTON.  55 

picturesque,  with  a  pretty,  old-fashioned  garden 
beside  it,  where  the  flowers  defied  the  May  in 
a  sort  of  embattled  bloom.  This  was  the  Buck- 
ner  Tavern  at  the  time  of  the  fight,  and  it  was 
even  then  an  old  house,  —  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  as  the  beams  in  the  parlor  ceiling  still 
show.  It  afforded  a  rendezvous  for  the  Provin 
cials  when  the  alarm  of  the  British  approach  was 
first  sounded  by  Paul  Revere,  and  there  most 
of  the  men  lingered  and  waited  subject  to  their 
captain's  orders,  after  he  had  begun  to  doubt  the 
truth  of  the  rumor.  The  interval  must  have 
been  trying  to  those  unwarlike  men,  but  they  all 
answered  the  drum  when  a  messenger  galloped 
up  with  the  news  that  the  King's  troops  were 
right  upon  them.  Some  of  them  had  gone  to  bed 
again  in  their  homes  beside  the  green,  and  they 
left  their  wives  and  children  sleeping  almost 
within  sound  of  a  whisper  from  the  spot  where 
they  loosely  formed  on  the  grass  before  their 
doors.  They  were  very  simple  and  quiet  folks, 
with  no  long  perspective  of  national  glory  to 


56  THREE    VILLAGES. 

embolden  and  sustain  them  in  the  resistance 
they  were  about  to  offer  their  King :  a  name  at 
which  we  do  not  trouble  ourselves  to  laugh  now, 
but  which  was  then  to  be  feared  next  to  God's. 
Independence  was  scarcely  dreamt  of;  all  that 
the  villagers  were  clear  of  was  their  right  as 
Englishmen,  and  they  stood  there  upon  that, 
with  everything  else  around  them  in  a  dark  far 
thicker  than  the  morning  gloom  out  of  which 
the  red-coats  flashed  at  the  other  corner  of  the 
green.  Major  Pitcairne  called  a  halt  at  some 
thirty  rods,  and  riding  forward  swore  at  the 
damned  rebels,  and  bade  them  disperse.  They 
stood  firm,  and  he  ordered  his  men  to  fire ;  the 
soldiers  hesitated ;  but  when  he  drew  his  pistols 
and  emptied  them  at  the  Provincials,  they  dis 
charged  a  volley,  and  eight  of  our  people  fell. 
They  were  not  a  tithe  of  the  enemy  in  number, 
and  it  is  doubtful  if  they  returned  the  fire  ;  their 
captain  called  a  retreat,  and  those  who  were 
unhurt  made  their  escape,  to  join  later  in  the 
long  running  fight  through  which  the  Provincials 


LEXINGTON.  57 

all  day  harassed  the  flight  of  the  British  from 
Concord  back  to  Boston.  Major  Pitcairne  had 
dispersed  a  riot,  and  had  shed  the  first  blood  in 
a  seven  years'  war.  The  dead  men  lay  on  the 
grass  where  their  children  had  played  a  few  hours 
before ;  one,  shot  through  the  breast,  dragged 
himself  a  little  space  to  his  own  threshold  and 
died  there  in  the  arms  of  his  wife. 

Many  stories  are  told  of  the  peaceful  inex 
perience  of  these  people  who  had  defied  a  mighty 
empire.  A  few  of  them  had  been  in  what  we 
call  the  Old  French  War,  and  had  served  under 
Wolfe  at  the  taking  of  Quebec ;  but  it  was  so 
little  understood  generally  that  war  meant  fight 
ing,  that  some  boys  came  to  the  common  that 
morning  as  to  a  sort  of  muster,  and  only  retired 
when  the  bullets  whistled  over  their  heads. 
After  the  encounter  at  Concord,  where  an  hour 
or  two  later  — 

"  The  embattled  farmers  stood, 
And  fired  the  shot  heard  round  the  world/' 

the  popular  education  in  the  art  of  war  pro- 


58  THREE    VILLAGES. 

ceeded  rapidly ;  though  even  then  one  of  our 
men  who  was  unsuspiciously  firing  from  behind 
a  stone  wall  at  the  British  column  in  the  road, 
had  the  surprise  and  mortification  to  be  himself 
shot  in  the  back  by  a  flanking  party.  Before 
noon  the  retreat  from  Concord  had  become  a 
rout,  that  was  not  arrested  till  Earl  Percy  arrived 
at  Lexington  with  twelve  hundred  men  and  two 
pieces  of  cannon.  The  whole  country  side  was 
up ;  the  Minute-Men  from  Acton,  Concord,  Me- 
notomy,  Lexington,  and  Cambridge  were  joined 
by  those  of  Woburn,  Billerica,  and  even  some 
of  the  seaboard  towns,  in  pursuing  the  King's 
troops.  The  season  was  so  unusually  advanced 
that  the  cherry-trees  were  in  bloom  ;  the  day  was 
one  of  that  sudden  and  sickening  heat  that  some 
times  occurs  in  our  spring ;  and  when  the  troops 
met  Percy's  supporting  column  at  the  Mon 
roe  Tavern,  many  of  them  fell  down  in  the 
dust,  "  with  their  tongues  lolling  out  like  dogs'.  " 
They  had  fought  a  running  fight  for  ten  miles, 
and  they  had  marched  in  all  nearly  thirty  since 


LEXINGTON.  59 

they  left  Boston  the  night  before.  Percy's  can 
non  scared  away  the  riflemen  who  hung  upon 
their  rear,  and  his  men,  scattering  over  the 
country,  fired  the  farmhouses  that  might  be 
supposed  to  afford  shelter  to  the  Minute-Men. 
Some  of  the  houses  were  beyond  gunshot,  and 
the  sick  and  old  who  were  here  and  there  bayo 
neted  in  them  would  perhaps  now  have  been 
spared.  The  word  had  gone  about  that  the 
Americans  were  scalping  the  English  dead,  and 
something  had  to  be  done  in  retaliation.  No 
soldiers  were  found  scalped,  but  a  good  many 
farmhouses  were  burned  ;  for  when  Percy  began 
to  retire,  the  shooting  from  the  walls  and  the 
woods  along  the  road  began  again,  and  contin 
ued  throughout  the  retreat.  At  different  points 
on  the  route  stones  have  been  set  up  to  com 
memorate  the  acts  of  reprisal  committed  by  the 
soldiers :  here  stood  a  house  burned  by  the 
British ;  in  another  house  three  Americans  were 
massacred ;  in  another  twelve ;  and  so  forth. 
One  of  these  monuments,  in  Arlington  (then 


60  THREE    VILLAGES. 

Menotomy),  celebrates  the  valor  and  final  per 
severance  of  one  of  the  patriots  in  terms  that 
used  to  amuse  me  in  spite  of  the  gravity  of 
the  facts.  "On  this  spot,  Samuel  Whittemore, 
aged  81,  killed  three  British  soldiers.  He  was 
shot,  beaten,  bayoneted,  and  left  for  dead,  but 
recovered,  and  lived  to  be  98  years  old."  My 
readers  may  differ  with  me  as  to  the  political 
principles  of  this  hoary  man,  but  there  can  be 
but  one  opinion  concerning  his  resolution  and 
physical  toughness. 

We  have  counted  it  all  joy  in  our  annals  that 
we  were  able  to  embitter  defeat  to  the  British 
in  the  pursuit  from  Concord  to  Boston,  and  have 
of  course* made  the  most  of  their  reprisals.  But 
perhaps  these  did  not  appear  to  them  such 
enormities.  To  be  fired  on  from  every  covert 
by  the  roadside,  and  helplessly  slaughtered  by 
a  people  they  despised,  was  a  thing  that  must 
have  had  its  exasperations ;  and  they  responded 
in  the  way  that  might  have  been  expected. 
"War  is  cruel,  madam,"  General  Sherman  ex- 


LEXINGTON.  61 

plained  to  the  lady  who  came  out  from  Atlanta 
to  reproach  him  for  bombarding  a  town  where 
so  many  non-combatants  must  suffer;  and  our 
race,  whether  English  or  American,  has  never 
"  made  war  with  water  of  roses."  The  British 
had  succeeded  in  the  object  of  their  expedition ; 
they  had  destroyed  the  Provincial  stores  at  Con 
cord  ;  but  they  lost  that  day  more  men  than 
it  cost  them  to  capture  Quebec.  The  day  is 
only  a  chapter  of  history  now.  We  are  tender 
and  proud  of  it,  because  it  is  our  own,  and 
because  it  vindicated  us,  and  proved  us  after  the 
fashion  of  war  in  the  right.  But  if  there  have 
been  griefs  between  the  two  countries  that  no 
dilution  of  "the  language  of  Shakespeare  and 
Milton  "  can  wash  out  the  memory  of,  there  is 
scarcely  a  pang  in  them  any  more.  Meanwhile 
we  are  still  very  far  apart,  and  after  all  that 
cables  and  steamships  can  do,  there  are  three 
thousand  miles  of  sea,  and  immeasurable  gulfs 
of  democracy  between  us.  With  a  few  excep 
tions  on  either  side,  we  heartily  dislike  and 


62  THREE    VILLAGES. 

distrust  each  other's  civic  and  social  ideas. 
England  Americanizes  in  some  respects,  in  some 
respects  America  Anglicizes ;  but  the  most  of 
that  amounts  to  very  little,  I  suspect;  and  for 
our  part,  whatever  outcry  we  make  over  our 
own  follies  and  sins  and  errors,  we  do  not  believe 
that  it  is  less  democracy,  but  more,  that  is  to 
help  us.  Mere  contiguity  might  do  something 
to  reconcile  the  ideals  of  the  two  countries,  but 
it  could  not  do  everything.  The  four  millions 
of  Canada  are  not  affected  by  the  proximity  of 
our  fifty  millions  ;  they  cling  all  the  more  closely 
to  the  English  ideal,  or  what  they  imagine  it 
to  be,  and  shudder  at  the  spectre  of  annexation, 
which  exists  only  in  their  own  nervous  abhor 
rence. 

At  the  same  time,  there  is  apt  to  be  so  much 
kindness  between  us  personally  when  we  meet 
on  any  common  ground,  that  it  is  difficult  to 
realize  the  national  alienation,  and  impossible  to 
account  for  it.  We  seem  so  very  much  alike, 
—  I  necessarily  speak  only  for  the  American 


LEXINGTON.  63 

half  of  the  impression,  —  that  we  feel  like  assert 
ing  an  indisputable  brotherhood.  Upon  reflec 
tion  we  have  our  reserves,  our  doubts,  our  fears ; 
but  for  the  time  the  illusion  is  delightfully  per 
fect.  It  occurs  with  Americans,  sometimes  not 
only  upon  acquaintance  or  speech  with  English 
men,  but  at  the  mere  sight  of  their  faces,  which 
have  a  kindred  look,  whatever  their  calling  or 
degree ;  and  I  think  we  are  never  less  wrapped 
in  the  national  flag  than  when  we  encounter 
English  soldiers.  The  other  day  I  was  walking 
through  one  of  the  Parks  when  I  came  upon 
some  sort  of  little  barrack,  where  two  or  three 
privates,  being  temporarily  debarred  from  flirta 
tion  with  the  nursery  maids  by  the  duty  they 
were  on,  presented  themselves  purely  and  simply 
as  my  traditional  enemies.  But  so  far  from 
wishing  to  offer  them  battle,  I  could  only  think 
of  that  whimsical  and  remorseful  passage  of 
Hawthorne's  "  Septimius  Felton,"  in  which  he 
describes  Pitcairne's  men  as  they  marched  into 
Concord  after  the  affair  at  Lexington,  dusty, 


64  THREE    VILLAGES. 

wearied,  and  footsore,  but' "needing  only  a  half- 
hour's  rest,  a  good  breakfast,  and  a  pot  of  beer 
apiece,  to  make  them  ready  to  face  the  world. 
Nor  did  their  faces  look  in  any  way  rancorous, 
but  at  the  most  only  heavy,  cloddish,  good- 
natured,  and  humane.  '  Oh,  heavens,  Mr.  Fel- 
ton  ! '  whispered  Rose  ;  l  why  should  we  shoot 
these  men,  or  they  us?  They  look  kind,  if 
homely.'  '  It  is  the  strangest  thing  in  the  world 
that  we  should  think  of  killing  them/  said  Sep- 
timius." 

Indeed  it  was  monstrous.  I  realized  then  as 
never  before  the  tremendous  moral  disadvantage 
a  democracy  is  at  in  any  war  with  a  royal  or 
oligarchic  power;  for  whereas  a  portion  of  the 
Republican  idea  is  slain  in  every  American  who 
perishes  on  the  field,  the  poor  fellows  who  fall 
on  the  other  side  personally  express  nothing, 
while  the  real  enemy  remains  safe  at  home.  It 
was  no  longer  a  question  of  shooting  at  the  King 
and  his  ministers  from  behind  stone  walls,  as  it 
had  been  hitherto,  but  of  picking  off  such  amiable 


LEXINGTON.  65 

and  friendly-looking  folk  as  those  I  saw.  Some 
thing  in  my  heart  —  no  doubt  the  brother  ple 
beian —  stirred  in  their  presence  with  a  novel 
pain ;  and  if  I  could  have  hoped  to  make  these 
honest  men  in  anywise  cognizant  of  April  19, 
1775, 1  might  have  wished  to  excuse  it  to  them. 


SHIRLEY. 


SHIRLEY. 


TT  was  our  fortune  to  spend  six  weeks  of  the 
summer  of  1875  m  tne  neighborhood  of  a 
community  of  the  people  called  Shakers,  who 
are  chiefly  known  to  the  world- outside  by  their 
apple-sauce,  by  their  garden  seeds  so  punctual 
in  coming  up  when  planted,  by  their  brooms  so 
well  made  that  they  sweep  clean  long  after  the 
ordinary  new  broom  of  proverb  has  retired  upon 
its  reputation,  by  the  quaintness  of  their  dress, 
and  by  the  fame  of  their  religious  dances.  It  is 
well  to  have  one's  name  such  a  synonyme  for 
honesty  that  anything  called  by  it  may  be  bought 
and  sold  with  perfect  confidence,  and  it  is 
surely  no  harm  to  be  noted  for  dressing  out 


70  THREE    VILLAGES. 

of  the  present  fashion,  or  for  dancing  before  the 
Lord.  But  when  our  summer  had  come  to  an 
end,  and  we  had  learned  to  know  the  Shakers  for 
so  many  other  qualities,  we  grew  almost  to  resent 
their  superficial  renown  among  men.  We  saw 
in  them  a  sect  simple,  sincere,  and  fervently  per 
suaded  of  the  truth  of  their  doctrine,  striving 
for  the  realization  of  a  heavenly  ideal  upon  earth  ; 
and  amidst  the  hard  and  often  sordid  common 
place  of  our  ordinary  country  life,  their  practice 
of  the  austerities  to  which  men  and  women  have 
devoted  themselves  in  storied  times  and  pictur 
esque  lands  clothed  these  Yankee  Shakers  in 
something  of  the  pathetic  interest  which  always 
clings  to  our  thoughts  of  monks  and  nuns. 

Their  doctrine  has  been  so  often  explained 
that  I  need  not  dwell  upon  it  here,  but  the 
more  curious  reader  may  turn  to  the  volumes  of 
"The  Atlantic  Monthly"  of  1867  for  an  authori 
tative  statement  of  all  its  points  in  the  auto 
biography  of  Elder  Evans  of  Mt.  Lebanon. 
Mainly,  their  faith  is  their  life ;  a  life  of  charity, 


SHIRLEY.  71 

of  labor,  of  celibacy,  which  they  call  the  angelic 
life.  Theologically,  it  can  be  most  succinctly 
presented  in  their  formula,  Christ  Jesus  and 
Christ  Ann,  their  belief  being  that  the  order  of 
special  prophecy  was  completed  by  the  inspi 
ration  of  Mother  Ann  Lee,  the  wife  of  the  Eng 
lish  blacksmith,  Stanley.  She  is  their  second 
Christ ;  their  divine  mother,  whom  some  of 
their  hymns  invoke  ;  and  for  whom  they  cher 
ish  a  filial  love.  The  families  of  Shirley  and 
Harvard,  Massachusetts,  were  formed  in  her 
time,  near  the  close  of  the  last  century ;  at  the 
latter  place  they  show  the  room  in  which  she 
lived,  and  whence  she  was  once  dragged  by 
the  foolish  mob  which  helps  to  found  every 
new  religion. 

In  regard  to  other  points  their  minds  vary. 
Generally  they  do  not  believe  in  the  miraculous 
birth  or  divinity  of  Christ ;  he  was  a  divinely 
good  and  perfect  man,  and  any  of  us  may  be 
come  divine  by  being  godlike.  Generally,  also, 
I  should  say  that  they  reject  the  Puritanic  ideas 


72  THREE    VILLAGES. 

of  future  rewards  and  punishments,  and  accept 
something  like  the  Swedenborgian  notion  of  the 
life  hereafter.  They  are  all  spiritualists,  recog 
nizing  a  succession  of  inspirations  from  the  ear 
liest  times  down  to  our  own,  when  they  claim 
to  have  been  the  first  spiritual  mediums.  Five 
or  six  years  before  the  spirits  who  have  since 
animated  so  many  table-legs,  planchettes,  phan 
tom  shapes,  and  what  not  began  to  knock  at 
Rochester,  the  Shaker  families  in  New  York, 
Massachusetts,  Ohio,  and  elsewhere  were  in  full 
communion  with  the  other  world,  and  they  were 
warned  of  the  impending  invasion  of  the  world's 
parlor  and  dining-room  sets.  They  feel  by  no 
means  honored,  however,  by  all  the  results. 
But  they  believe  that  the  intercourse  between 
the  worlds  can  be  rescued  from  the  evil  in 
fluences  which  have  perverted  it,  and  they  have 
signs,  they  say,  of  an  early  renewal  of  the  mani 
festations  among  themselves.  In  some  ways 
these  have  in  fact  never  ceased.  Many  of  the 
Shaker  hymns,  words  and  music,  are  directly 


SHIRLEY  73 

inspirational,  coming  to  this  brother  or  that  sister 
without  regard  to  his  or  her  special  genius  ;  they 
are  sung  and  written  down,  and  are  then  brought 
into  general  use.  The  poetry  is  like  that  which 
the  other  world  usually  furnishes  through  its 
agents  in  this,  —  hardly  up  to  our  literary 
standard ;  but  the  music  has  always  something 
strangely  wild,  sweet,  and  naive  in  it. 

The  Shakers  claim  to  be  the  purest  and  most 
Christian  church,  proceeding  in  a  straight  suc 
cession  from  the  church  which  Christ's  life  of 
charity  and  celibacy  established  on  earth ; 
whereas,  all  the  other  churches  are  sprung  from 
the  first  Gentile  churches,  to  whose  weakness 
and  wilfulness  certain  regrettable  things,  as  slavery, 
war,  private  property,  and  marriage,  were  per 
mitted.  Acknowledging  a  measure  of  inspiration 
in  all  religions,  they  also  recognize  a  kindred 
attraction  to  the  angelic  life  in  the  celibate 
orders  of  every  faith  :  the  Roman  vestals,  the 
Peruvian  virgins  of  the  sun,  and  the  Buddhist 
bonzes,  as  well  as  the  monks  and  nuns  of  the 


74  THREE    VILLAGES. 

Catholic  Church.  They  complain  that  they 
have  not  been  understood  by  such  alien  writers 
as  have  treated  of  them,  and  have  represented 
them  as  chiefly  useful  in  furnishing  homes  for 
helpless  and  destitute  people  of  all  ages  and 
sexes.  In  the  words  of  Elder  Fraser,  of  Shirley, 
the  Shakers  claim  that  their  system  is  "  based  on 
the  fact  that  each  man  has  in  himself  a  higher 
and  a  lower  life,"  and  that  Shakerism  "  is  a  mani 
festation  of  the  higher  to  the  exclusion  of  the 
lower  life.  Its  object  is  to  gather  into  one  fold 
all  who  have  risen  above  their  natural  propensi 
ties,"  and  they  think  with  Paul  that  though 
those  who  marry  do  well,  yet  those  who  do  not 
marry  do  better.  Their  preaching  and  teach 
ing  is  largely  to  this  effect ;  and  yet  I  do  not 
find  it  quite  strange  that  friends  from  the  world- 
outside  regard  rather  the  spectacle  of  the  Shakers' 
peaceful  life,  and  think  mostly  of  their  quiet  homes 
as  refuges  for  those  disabled  against  fate,  the 
poor,  the  bruised,  the  hopeless ;  after  all,  Christ 
himself  is  but  this.  As  I  recall  their  plain, 


SHIRLEY.  75 

quaint  village  at  Shirley,  a  sense  of  its  exceed 
ing  peace  fills  me ;  I  see  its  long,  straight  street, 
with  the  severely  simple  edifices  on  either  hand  ; 
the  gardens  up-hill  on  one  side  and  down-hill 
on  the  other ;  its  fragrant  orchards  and  its  levels 
of  clovery  meadow-land  stretching  away  to  buck 
wheat  fields,  at  the  borders  of  whose  milky 
bloom  the  bee  paused,  puzzled  which  sweet  to 
choose ;  and  it  seems  to  me  that  one  whom  the 
world  could  flatter  no  more,  one  broken  in  hope, 
or  health,  or  fortune,  could  not  do  better  than 
come  hither  and  meekly  ask  to  be  taken  into 
that  quiet  fold,  and  kept  forever  from  his  sorrows 
and  himself.  But  —  such  is  the  hardness  of  the 
natural  heart  —  I  cannot  think  of  one's  being  a 
Shaker  on  any  other  terms,  except,  of  course,  a 
sincere  conviction. 

The  first  time  that  we  saw  the  Shaker  worship 
was  on  the  occasion  of  Sister  Julia's  funeral,  to 
which  we  were  asked  the  day  after  her  death. 
It  was  a  hot  afternoon  at  the  end  of  July,  and 
when  we  drove  out  of  the  woods,  we  were  glad 


76  THREE    VILLAGES. 

of  the  ash  and  maple  trees  that  shade  the  vil 
lage  street  in  nearly  its  whole  length.  There 
were  once  three  families  at  Shirley,  but  the 
South  Family,  so-called,  has  been  absorbed  by 
the  Church  Family,  and  its  dwellings,  bams, 
and  shops  are  occupied  by  tenants  and  work 
people  of  the  community.  The  village  is  built 
on  each  side  of  the  road,  under  the  flank  of  a 
long  ridge,  and  the  land  still  falls,  from  the  build 
ings  on  the  eastern  side,  into  a  broad,  beautiful 
valley  (where  between  its  sycamores  the  Nashua 
run  sunseen),  with  gardens,  orchards,  patches  of 
corn  and  potatoes,  green  meadows,  and  soft 
clumps  of  pine  woods ;  beyond  rise  the  fertile 
hills  in  a  fold  of  which  the  village  of  the  Harvard 
Shakers  lies  hid  from  their  brethren  at  Shirley. 

Between  the  South  Family  and  the  Church 
Family  were  two  wayside  monuments  that  always 
won  my  admiration  and  homage.  One  was  a 
vast  apple-tree,  whose  trunk  was  some  three  feet 
through,  and  whose  towering  top  was  heavy, 
even  in  an  off-year  for  apples,  with  a  mass  of 


SHIRLEY.  77 

young  fruit ;  apparently  this  veteran,  after  sup 
plying  cider  and  "  sass "  for  at  least  a  century, 
was  resolute  to  continue  its  benefactions  for 
another  hundred  years  to  come.  The  other 
reverend  monument  on  this  road  was  the  horse- 
trough  :  not  one  of  the  perishable  horse-troughs 
that  our  civilization,  conscious  of  its  own  evanes 
cence,  scoops  from  a  log,  and  leaves  to  soak  and 
.rot  year  by  year,  but  a  great,  generous  bowl, 
four  feet  across,  and  nearly  as  many  deep,  which 
some  forgotten  Shaker  brother  had  patiently  hol 
lowed  out  of  a  mass  of  granite.  A  spring,  led  in 
pipes  from  the  hill-side,  fills  it  to  the  brim,  with 
a  continual  soft  bubble  in  the  centre  and  silent 
drip  of  the  moisture  over  the  edges  to  keep  fresh 
the  cool,  sober  gre'en  with  which  in  many  pass 
ing  years  it  has  painted  the  gray  stone.  Our 
horse  was  hired  from  the  Shakers,  and  was,  if 
one  may  say  it  without  disrespect,  so  bigoted  a 
brother  himself  that  he  could  scarcely  be  got  to 
drink  any  water  at  our  farm,  but  kept  his  thirst 
for  this  fount,  which,  even  when  he  was  not 


7  8  THREE    VILLAGES. 

thirsty,  he  would  fondly  stop  to  kiss  and  loll  his 
great  head  over.  The  brother  to  whom  he  be 
longed  by  courtesy  (for  of  course  he  was  owned 
in  common,  like  everything  else  Shaker)  had  let 
him  form  the  habit  of  snatching  birch  leaves  and 
bushy  tops  of  all  sorts  along  the  woodland  roads, 
and  we  learned  to  indulge  and  even  cherish  this 
eccentricity.  He  was  called  Skip ;  apparently 
because  he  never  skipped. 

We  stopped  at  the  office  of  the  Church  Fam 
ily,  which  is  a  large  brick  house,  scrupulously 
plain,  like  all  the  rest,  and  appointed  for  the 
transaction  of  business  and  the  entertainment  of 
visitors.  Here  three  sisters  and  one  brother  are 
in  charge,  and  here  are  chambers  for  visitors 
staying  overnight.  The  Shakers  do  not  keep  a 
public-house,  and  are  far  from  inviting  custom, 
but  their  theory  of  Christianity  forbids  them  to 
turn  any  one  unhoused  or  unfed  from  their 
doors;  the  rich  pay  a  moderate  charge,  and 
the  poor  nothing  —  as  that  large  and  flourishing 
order  of  fellow-citizens,  the  tramps,  very  well 


SHIRLEY.  79 

know.  These  overripe  fruits  of  our  labor  system 
lurk  about  in  the  woods  and  by-ways,  and  turn 
up  at  the  Shakers'  doors  after  dark,  where  they 
are  secure  of  being  fed  and  sheltered  in  the 
little  dormitory  set  apart  for  them.  "  And  some 
of  them,"  said  Elder  Fraser,  "  really  look  as  if 
the  Pit  had  vomited  them  up." 

In  the  parlor  of  the  office  we  found  our  friends 
the  office-sisters,  and  a  number  of  Shakers  and 
Shakeresses  from  Harvard,  including  two  of  the 
Harvard  elders,  who  had  come  to  the  funeral, 
and  who  presently  repaired  to  the  plain,  white- 
painted,  hip-roofed  church-building.  Besides 
ourselves  there  were  but  few  of  the  world-out- 
side  there,  and  these  few  were  nearly  all  tenants 
from  the  South  Family  farm,  so  that  the  whole 
ceremony  was  unrestricted  by  reference  to  spec 
tators,  though  I  am  bound  to  add  that  no  Shaker 
ceremony  that  I  have  seen  was  embarrassed  by 
the  world's  observation,  however  great  the  at 
tendance  of  lookers-on.  We  were  separated, 
the  men  from  the  women,  as  were  the  brethren 


o  THREE    VILLAGES. 

and  sisters,  who  sat  facing  each  other  on  rows  of 
long  settees  opposite  the  spectators.  The  sisters 
came  in  wearing  their  stiff  gauze  caps ;  the 
brothers  with  their  broad  straw-hats,  which  they 
took  off  and  hung  up  on  the  wooden  pegs  set 
round  the  whole  room. 

There  was  silence  for  a  little  while,  in  which 
the  Shakers  took  from  their  pockets  and  laid 
across  their  knees  white  handkerchiefs  as  great 
and  thick  as  napkins,  and  then  placed  their 
hands  palm  down  on  the  handkerchiefs,  and 
waited  till  some  one  began  to  sing,  when  they 
all  joined  in  the  hymn.  There  was  none  of  their 
characteristic  dancing  —  or  marching,  rather  — 
that  day,  but  as  they  sang  they  all  softly  beat 
time  with  their  hands  upon  their  knees,  and 
they  sang  with  a  fervent  rapture  that  the  self- 
possessed  worship  of  our  world's  congregations 
no  longer  knows.  Their  hymns  were  now  wild 
and  sad,  and  now  jubilant,  but  the  music  was 
always  strong  and  sweet,  as  it  came  from  lips 
on  which  it  had  been  breathed  by  angelic  inspi- 


SHIRLEY.  8 1 

ration.  There  seemed  to  be  no  leader,  but  after 
each  silence  some  brother  or  sister  began  to 
sing,  and  the  rest  followed,  except  in  one  case, 
when  it  was  announced  that  the  hymn  was  Sister 
Julia's  favorite  and  would  be  sung  in  compliance 
with  her  request.  There  was  no  prayer,  or  any 
set  discourse,  but  the  elders  and  eldresses  and 
many  others  spoke  in  commemoration  of  Sister 
Julia's  duteous  and  faithful  life,  and  in  expres 
sion  of  their  love  for  her.  Their  voices  trem 
bled,  and  the  younger  sisters,  who  had  been 
most  about  her  at  the  last,  freely  gave  way 
to  their  tears.  Each  one  who  spoke  had 
some  special  tribute  to  pay  to  her  faithfulness, 
or  some  tender  little  testimony  to  bear  to-  her 
goodness  of  heart ;  several  read  verses  which 
they  had  written  in  memory  of  her,  and  amongst 
these  was  the  elder  of  the  Church  Family,  who 
conducted  the  ceremonies.  What  was  most  ob 
servable  in  it  all  was  the  familiar  character;  it 
was  as  if  these  were  brothers  and  sisters  by  the 
ties  cf  nature,  who  spoke  of  the  dead.  The 
6 


82  THREE    VILLAGES. 

faces  of  nearly  all  but  our  old  friend  Elder 
Fraser  were  strange  to  us,  but  they  were  none 
the  less  interesting,  from  the  many-wrinkled 
front  of  the  nonagenarian  who  has  spent  half 
his  century  in  Shirley,  to  the  dimpled  visage  of 
the  small  boy  or  girl  last  adopted  into  the  family. 
They  were  peaceful  faces,  the  older  ones  with 
the  stamp  of  a  strong  discipline  which  sustained 
while  it  subdued.  The  women  were  in  far  the 
greater  number,  as  they  are  in  the  world's  as 
semblies  in  this  quarter,  and  a  good  half  were 
children  or  young  girls  who  had  not  come  to 
close  question  with  themselves,  and  of  whom  it 
could  not  yet  be  finally  affirmed  that  they  were 
Shakeresses.  The  history  which  was  not  written 
could  not  be  read,  but  it  was  not  easy  to  believe 
of  those  who  had  passed  their  prime  that  they 
had  devoted  themselves  to  their  ideal  without 
regrets,  or  misgivings,  nor  was  it  true  of  any. 
"We  are  women,"  one  of  them  afterwards  said, 
"  and  we  have  had  our  thoughts  of  homes  and 
children  of  our  own/' 


SHIRLEY.  83 

During  our  six  weeks'  stay  near  them  we  saw 
our  Shaker  friends  nearly  every  day.  Some  of 
their  fruit  was  now  coming  into  season,  and  we 
were  asked  down  to  the  village  to  see  the  first 
harvest  of  their  new  Wachusett  blackberry,  a  re 
cent  discovery  by  Brother  Leander,  who  noticed 
a  vine  one  day  by  the  wayside  on  which  the 
berries  hung  ripe,  while  those  on  neighboring 
bushes  were  yet  two  weeks  from  their  maturity. 
He  observed  also  that  the  cane  was  almost  free 
from  thorns ;  he  marked  the  vine,  and  when  the 
leaves  fell,  transplanted  it.  In  the  garden  we 
found  a  dozen  brothers  and  sisters  busy  on 
either  side  of  the  rows  of  bushes  which  bowed 
beneath  their  weight  of  ripe  berries  in  those  first 
days  of  August. 

In  the  afternoon  we  found  the  office-sisters 
in  the  basement  of  their  dwelling,  putting  up 
the  berries  in  boxes,  which  they  did  with  Shaker 
scrupulosity  as  to  ripeness  and  justness  of  meas 
ure.  The  Shakers  are  very  diligent  people,  and 
yet  seem  always  to  have  any  desired  leisure,  as 


84  THREE    VILLAGES. 

one  may  notice  in  large,  old-fashioned  families 
where  people  do  their  own  work.  The  indus 
tries  at  Shirley  are  broom-making  (at  which  the 
minister,  Elder  John  Whiteley,1  and  several  of 
the  brothers  work),  raising  blackberries,  drying 
sweet  corn,  and  making  apple-sauce  and  jel 
lies.  In  former  times,  before  the  wickedness  of 
fermented  drinks  was  clearly  established,  one 
brother  made  wine  from  the  bacchanal  grape  as 
well  as  the  self-righteous  elderberry,  and  some 
bottles  of  his  vintage  yet  linger  in  the  office- 
cellar.  But  no  wine  has  been  made  for  many 

1  Elder  Whiteley  is  an  Englishman,  who  before  coming  to 
this  country  had  heard  the  Shakers  mentioned  by  Robert  Owen 
as  successful  communists,  and  shortly  after  his  arrival,  in  1843, 
heard  the  scrupulous  honesty  of  the  sect  spoken  of.  He  tried 
to  learn  something  about  their  belief  at  this  time,  but  it  was  not 
till  five  years  later  that  he  succeeded.  Then  a  fellow-work 
man  (he  was  a  wool-sorter  by  trade)  lent  him  some  of  the 
doctrinal  books  of  the  Shakers,  which  he  read  aloud  with  his 
wife  in  the  winter  evenings.  They  both  "  gathered  faith  "  in 
the  Shaker  life,  and  shortly  after  they  made  the  acquaintance  of 
some  Shakers  visiting  friends  in  Andover,  where  Elder  White- 
ley  lived,  and  by  their  invitation  returned  with  them  to  Shirley. 
Hither,  two  months  later,  they  came  again,  bringing  their 


SHIRLEY.  85 

years,  now;  for  the  Shakers  are  very  strictly 
abstemious.  Yet  if  a  brother's  natural  man  in 
sist  upon  a  draught  now  and  then,  they  consider 
all  the  circumstances,  and  do  not  forbid,  while 
they  deplore.  A  similar  tolerance  they  use  to 
ward  tobacco,  and  I  have  seen  a  snuffing  as  well 
as  a  chewing  brother.  They  generally  avoid 
also  tea  and  coffee,  shortened  biscuit,  dough 
nuts,  and  the  whole  unwholesome  line  of  coun 
try  cookery,  while  they  accept  and  practise  the 
new  gospel  of  oatmeal  porridge  and  brown- 
bread  gems  in  its  fulness.  Many  of  the  younger 
people  are  averse  from  meat,  following  the  ex- 
children,  and  lived  together  nearly  four  years  in  the  South 
Family.  At  the  end  of  that  time  Elder  Whiteley  was  asked  to 
take  charge  of  the  temporal  affairs  of  the  North  Family,  and 
the  test  of  their  faith  had  come.  The  father  and  mother,  who 
had  known  each  other  from  childhood,  parted,  and  gave  up 
their  children  to  the  charge  of  the  community.  In  a  few  years 
he  became  elder  of  the  North  Family,  and  about  five  years  ago 
he  was  chosen  to  hi;:  present  place  in  the  ministry. 

Elder  Whiteley  relates  that  en  his  voyage  to  America  he  had 
a  dream  or  vision  of  his  future  home  here,  so  vivid  that  he 
wrote  down  its  particulars.  When  he  first  came  to  Shirley  he 
recognized  at  once  the  scene  prefigured  in  his  dream. 


86  THREE    VILLAGES. 

ample  and  precept  of  our  good  Elder  Fraser, 
who  for  the  last  thirty-five  years  has  kept  his 
tough  Scotch  bloom  fresh  upon  a  diet  that  in 
volves  harm  to  no  living  creature,  and  at  seventy 
looks  as  ruddy  as  few  Americans  at  any  time  of 
life. 

But  after  this  testimony  to  their  healthful  regi 
men,  shall  I  confess  that  the  Shakers  did  not 
seem  to  me  especially  healthful- looking  ?  They 
do  not  look  so  fresh  nor  so  strong  as  the  same 
number  of  well-to-do  city  people  ;  and  they  are 
not,  as  a  community,  exempt  in  notable  degree 
from  the  ills  we  are  all  heir  to.  Is  it  possibly 
true  that  our  climate  is  healthful  only  in  propor 
tion  as  it  is  shut  out  by  brick  walls  and  plate- 
glass,  and  battened  clown  under  cobble  and  flag 
stones ;  that  the  less  fresh  air  we  have  the 
better,  and  that  Nature  here  is  at  best  only  a 
step-mother  to  our  race  ?  But  perhaps  it  is  too 
much  to  expect  a  single  generation,  gathered 
from  the  common  stock  of  an  unwisely-feeding 
ancestry,  to  show  the  good  effects  of  a  more 


SHIRLEY.  87 

reasonable  regimen.  The  Shakers  labor  under 
the  disadvantage  of  not  being  able  to  transmit  a 
cumulative  force  of  good  example  in  their  de 
scendants  ;  they  must  always  be  dealing,  even  in 
their  own  body,  with  the  sons  of  pie  and  the 
daughters  of  doughnut ;  and  Elder  Fraser,  who 
one  Sunday  spoke  outright  against  these  abomi 
nations,  addressing  the  strangers  present,  will 
have  to  preach  long  and  often  the  better  culi 
nary  faith,  which  the  Shakers  received  from  the 
spirits  (as  they  claim),  before  he  can  reach  the 
stomachs,  at  once  poor  and  proud,  of  the  dys 
peptical  world-outside. 

We  went  regularly  to  the  Shaker  meeting, 
which  in  summer  is  held  every  Sunday  in  the 
church-building  I  have  mentioned  ;  in  winter  the 
meetings  are  privately  held  in  the  large  room 
kept  for  that  purpose  in  every  Shaker  dwelling, 
and  used  throughout  the  year  for  family  gather 
ings,  social  and  devotional.  The  seats  for  spec 
tators  in  the  church  were  filled,  and  sometimes 
to  overflowing,  by  people  from  the  country  and 


88  THREE    VILLAGES. 

the  villages  round  about,  as  well  as  by  sum 
mer  boarders  from  the  neighboring  town  of 
Lancaster,  whose  modish  silks  and  millinery  dis 
tinguished  them  from  the  rural  congregation ; 
but  all  were  respectful  and  attentive  to  the  wor 
ship  which  they  had  come  to  look  at,  and  which, 
in  its  most  fantastic  phase,  I  should  think  could 
move  only  a  silly  person  to  laughter.  The  meet 
ings  opened  with  singing,  and  then  Elder  Weth- 
erbee,  of  the  Church  Family*  briefly  addressed 
the  brethren  and  sisters  in  terms  which  were 
commonly  a  grateful  recognition  of  the  beauty 
of  their  "  gospel  relation  "  to  each  other,  and  of 
their  safety  from  sin  in  a  world  of  evil.  The 
words  were  not  always  ready,  but  the  sincere 
affection  and  conviction  which  breathed  from 
them  were  characteristic  of  all  the  addresses  which 
followed.  After  the  elder  sat  down,  they  sang 
again,  and  then  the  minister,  John  Whiteley, 
read  a  chapter  of  the  Bible,  and  made  a  few 
remarks  ;  then,  with  alternate  singing  and  speak 
ing  (the  speaking  was  mostly  from  the  men, 


SHI  RLE  Y  89 

though  now  and  then  a  sister  rose  and  bore  her 
testimony  to  her  heartfelt  happiness  in  Shaker- 
ism,  or  declared  her  intention  to  take  up  a  cross 
against  such  or  such  a  tendency  of  her  nature), 
the  services  proceeded  till  the  time  for  the 
marching  came.  Till  this  time  the  brothers  and 
sisters  had  sat  confronting  each  other  on  settees, 
which  they  now  lifted  and  set  out  of  the  way 
against  the  wall.  A  group  formed  in  an  ellipse 
in  the  middle,  with  two  lines  of  marchers  out 
side  of  them,  headed  by  Elder  Wetherbee. 
Some  one  struck  into  one  of  their  stirring  march 
tunes,  and  those  in  the  ellipse  began  to  rock 
back  and  forth  on  their  feet,  and  to  sway  their 
bodies  to  the  music,  while  the  marchers  with  a 
sort  of  rising  motion  began  their  round,  all  beat 
ing  time  with  a  quick  outward  gesture  of  the  arms 
and  an  upward  gesture  of  the  open  palms.  It 
was  always  a  thrilling  sight,  fantastic,  as  I  said, 
but  not  ludicrous,  and  it  never  failed  to  tempt 
the  nerves  to  so  much  Shakerism  at  least  as  lay 
in  the  march.  To  the  worshippers  this  part  of 


90  THREE    VILLAGES. 

their  rite  was  evidently  that  sort  of  joy  which 
if  physical,  is  next  to  spiritual  transport.  Their 
faces  were  enraptured,  they  rose  and  rose  in 
their  march  with  a  glad  exultation  ;  suddenly 
the  singing  ceased,  the  march  instantly  ended, 
and  the  arms  of  each  sank  slowly  down  to  the 
side.  Some  brother  now  spoke  again,  and  when 
he  closed,  another  song  was  raised,  and  the 
march  resumed,  till  in  the  course  of  the  singing 
and  speaking  those  forming  the  central  ellipse 
had  been  relieved  and  enabled  to  join  the 
march.  When  it  ended,  the  settees  were  drawn 
up  again,  and  the  brethren  and  sisters  sat  down 
as  before.  Generally,  one  or  two  of  the  younger 
sisters  would  at  this  point  read  some  article  or 
poem  from  "  The  Shaker  and  Shakeress,"  —  the 
organ  of  the  sect  published  at  Mt.  Lebanon, 
New  York,  and  made  up  of  contributions  by 
members  of  the  different  families  throughout  the 
country.  If  the  extract  was  particularly  to  the 
minds  of  the  listeners,  one  of  them  pronounced 
it  "  good,"  and  there  was  a  general  testimony  to 


SHIRLEY.  91 

this  effect.  When  these  were  finished,  Elder 
Fraser,  of  the  North  Family,  came  forward  be 
tween  the  rows  of  Shakers,  and  addressed  the 
world  in  the  principal  discourse  of  the  day.  I 
always  liked  his  speaking,  for,  if  I  did  not 
accept  his  Shakerism,  I  felt  bound  to  accept 
his  good  sense ;  and  besides,  it  is  pleasant,  after 
the  generalizing  of  the  pulpits,  to  have  the  sins 
of  one's  fellow-men  frankly  named  and  fully 
rebuked ;  in  this  sort  of  satisfaction  I  sometimes 
almost  felt  myself  without  reproach.  I  suppose 
that  what  Elder  Fraser  and  Elder  Wetherbee 
and  Elder  John  Whiteley  preached  is  what  is 
called  morality  by  those  who  make  a  distinction 
between  that  and  religion;  but  there  was  con 
stant  reference  to  Christ  in  their  praise  of  the 
virtues  they  wished  us  to  practise.  Elder  Fra- 
ser's  discourses  took  a  wide  range  at  times,  and 
he  enforced  his  faith  in  language  which,  while 
it  was  always  simple,  was  seldom  wanting  in 
strength,  clearness,  and  literary  excellence.  He 
and  Minister  Whiteley  are  readers  of  most  of 


92  THREE    VILLAGES. 

the  late  books  of  religious  and  scientific  contro 
versy,  from  the  most  hopeless  of  which  they 
come  back  confirmed  and  refreshed  in  their 
Shaker  belief. 

It  was  very  pleasant  to  hear  Elder  Fraser,  not 
only  in  the  church,  but  also  among  his  rasp 
berries  and  grape-vines,  to  the  culture  of  which 
he  brought  a  spirit  by  no  means  bowed  to  the 
clod.  He  was  fond  of  drawing  illustrations  from 
nature  in  his  most  daring  theories  of  the  uni 
verse,  and  the  sucker  that  his  hoe  lopped  away, 
or  the  vine  bud  that  his  thumb  and  forefinger 
sacrificed  to  the  prosperity  of  the  clusters,  fur 
nished  him  argument  as  he  worked  and  talked. 
He  is  lately  from  Mt.  Lebanon,  where  his  years 
and  services  had  justly  retired  him  from  all 
labors  but  those  he  chose  to  add  to  his  literary 
pursuits ;  yet  he  came  back  to  active  life  in 
Shirley  at  the  intimation  that  his  presence  there 
would  be  to  the  advantage  of  the  North  Family, 
and  he  bears  his  little  cross  (as  the  Shakers  call 
any  trouble  they  would  make  light  of)  with  the 


SHIRLEY.  93 

cheerfulest  content.1  The  boys,  the  sweet  corn, 
the  tomatoes,  the  grapes,  the  pears,  flourish 
equally  in  his  care  at  the  North  Family,  and  I 
do  not  know  where  else  one  should  find  such 
clumps  of  cockscomb  and  prince's  feather  and 
beds  of  balsam  as  grow  under  his  kindly  smile 
and  diligent  hand. 

I  am  not  sure  whether  the  different  faces  in 
the  march  had  a  greater  or  less  fascination  to 
us  after  we  came  to  know  their  different  owners 
personally.  Each  showed  his  or  her  transport 
in  a  different  way,  and  each  had  some  peculiarity 
of  step  or  movement  that  took  our  idle  minds 
and  made  us  curious  about  their  history  and  char 
acter.  Among  them,  none  was  more  striking 
than  the  nonagenarian,  whose  bent  frame  kept 
its  place  in  the  round,  but  whose  nerveless  hands 
beat  time  after  a  very  fugitive  and  erratic  fashion. 

1  Those  who  care  to  taste  his  theological  quality,  and  get  at 
ths  sams  time  a  potent  draught  of  Shakerism,  can  send  to 
Shirley  for  his  characteristic  little  tract  on  "  The  Divine  Afflatus 
in  History." 


94  THREE    VILLAGES. 

Father  Abraham  is  very  deaf,  and  in  the  singing 
some  final  bit  of  belated  melody  always  stuck 
in  his  throat,  and  came  scratching  and  scrambling 
up  after  the  others  had  ceased  in  a  manner  that 
was  rather  hard  to  bear.  But  it  was  wonderful 
that  he  should  know  what  tunes  they  sang  when 
they  sang  without  book.  He  is  the  author  of  a 
system  of  musical  notation  which  the  Shakers 
used  exclusively  until  very  lately,  and  which  many 
of  them  still  prefer.  At  his  great  age  he  still 
works  every  day  at  basket-making,  in  which  he 
is  very  skilful  and  conscientious.  But  it  is  super 
fluous  to  say  this ;  Shaker  work  is  always  the 
best  of  its  kind.  He  is  rarely  sick,  and  he  takes 
part  in  all  the  details  of  the  worship,  as  he  did 
when  he  came,  sixty  years  ago.  He  was  then 
a  young  man,  and  it  is  said  that  he  visited  the 
community  from  idle  curiosity,  with  his  be 
trothed.  Its  life  and  faith  made  an  instant  im 
pression  upon  him,  and  he  proposed  to  the 
young  girl  that  they  should  both  become  Shakers  ; 
but  after  due  thought  she  refused.  She  said  that 


SHIRLEY,  95 

she  would  not  be  a  hindrance  to  his  wish  in  the 
matter ;  if  he  was  called  to  this  belief,  she  gave 
him  back  his  promise.  To  the  Shakers  it  seems 
right  that  he  should  have  accepted  her  sacrifice  ; 
to  some  of  the  world-outside  it  will  seem  tragic. 
Who  knows  ?  He  has  never  regretted  his  course  ; 
she  took  another  mate,  saw  her  children  about 
her  knee,  and  died  long  ago,  after  a  life  that  was 
no  doubt  as  happy  as  most.  But  perhaps  in 
an  affair  like  that,  a  girl's  heart  had  supreme 
claims.  Perhaps  there  are  some  things  that  one 
ought  not  to  do  even  with  the  hope  of  winning 
heaven. 

After  this  old  man,  some  of  the  little  ones,  left 
by  death  or  their  parents'  poverty  or  worthless- 
ness  to  the  care  of  the  Shakers,  were  the  most 
interesting  figures  in  the  march,  through  which 
they  moved  with  such  a  pretty  pleasure.  The 
meeting  must  have  been  a  delight  to  them,  though 
their  faces  kept  a  soberness  which  was  an  edify 
ing  proof  of  their  discipline.  This  is  the  effect 
of  vigilance  and  moral  suasion  ;  I  believe  the 


96  THREE   VILLAGES. 

Shakers  never  strike  their  little  wards,  or  employ 
any  harsh  measures  with  them. 

One  has  somehow  the  impression  that  the 
young  people  of  the  Shakers  are  held  in  com 
pulsory  allegiance ;  but  of  course  this  is  not  at 
all  the  fact.  As  soon  as  they  are  old  enough 
to  take  care  of  themselves  they  are  entirely  free 
to  go  or  to  stay.  Undoubtedly  they  are  con 
stantly  taught  the  advantages  of  the  community 
over  the  world,  and  the  superior  merit  of  the 
virgin  life  over  the  married  state,  which  they 
may  be  inclined  to  think  of  as  they  grow  to  be 
men  and  women.  Marriage  is  not  held  to  be 
sinful  or  dishonorable.  "  Few  things,"  said  one 
of  the  elders,  "  are  more  pleasing  to  us  than  the 
sight  of  a  happy  young  couple,  living  rightly  in 
their  order,"  but  marriage  is  earthly  and  human, 
and  celibacy  is  divine  ;  as  the  thoughts  are  turned 
to  higher  things,  they  forsake  husband  or  wife. 
Nevertheless,  if  their  young  women  will  marry, 
the  Shakers  claim  the  satisfaction  of  thinking 
that  they  have  received  in  the  community  the 


SHIRLEY.  97 

best  possible  training  for  wives  and  mothers,  — 
that  they  have  been  taught  diligence,  econo 
my  and  all  branches  of  domestic  knowledge. 
More  than  once  there  have  been  secessions  of 
young  people,  which  are  nearly  always  stealthy, 
not  because  there  could  be  any  constraint,  but 
because  they  dreaded  to  face  the  disappointed 
hopes  of  their  elders.  In  after  years,  these  de 
linquents  from  the  angelic  condition  sometimes 
return  to  thank  their  benefactors,  and  to  declare 
that  they  owe  most  of  their  worldly  prosperity 
to  their  unworldly  precepts.  The  proportion  of 
those  reared  in  Shakerism  whom  the  Shakers 
expect  to  keep  is  small;  they  count  quite  as 
much  for  their  increase  upon  accessions  of  mature 
men  and  women  from  outside,  whom  the  Shaker 
life  and  doctrine  persuade.  These  they  invite 
now,  as  always,  very  cordially  to  join  them, 
and  they  look  forward  to  a  time  when  their 
dwindling  communities  shall  be  restored  to  more 
than  their  old  numbers. 

One  bad  effect  of  the  present  decrease,  which 
7 


98  THREE    VILLAGES. 

all  thoughtful  Shakers  deplore,  is  the  employ 
ment  of  hired  labor.  This,  as  communists,  they 
feel  to  be  wrong;  but  they  are  loath  either  to 
alienate  their  land  or  to  let  it  lie  idle.  A  strange 
and  sad  state  of  things  results  :  the  most  profit 
able  crop  that  they  can  now  raise  is  timber, 
which  they  harvest  once  in  thirty  years,  and 
which  it  costs  nothing  to  cultivate,  whereas  it 
costs  more  to  plant  and  reap  the  ordinary  farm- 
crops,  at  the  present  rate  of  farm  labor,  than  the 
crops  will  sell  for.  This  is  the  melancholy  ex 
perience  of  shrewd  managers  and  economical 
agriculturists.  The  farmer  who  can  till  his  own 
fields  and  take  care  of  his  own  stock  can  live 
by  farming,  but  no  other  can.  One  might  not 
regret  this,  for  it  tends  to  encourage  the  sub 
division  of  land,  but  the  farm  which  one  man's 
labor  can  till  is  too  small  to  support  a  family ;  and 
the  farmer  cannot  count  upon  the  help  of  his 
children,  for  these,  as  soon  as  they  grow  up, 
leave  the  homestead,  the  girls  to  be  teachers, 
factory  operatives,  table-girls,  shop-girls ;  the 
boys  for  the  cities  and  the  West. 


SHIRLEY.  99 

"  111  fares  the  land  to  hastening  ills  a  prey, 
Where  wealth  accumulates  and  men  decay;  " 

and  perhaps  one  ought  to  take  heart  from  the 
fact  that  these  rural  districts  are  as  poor  as  ever, 
though  they  have  not  half  the  population  they 
had  fifty  years  ago.  Yet  it  was  not  easy  to  be 
cheerful  when  in  our  drives  about  the  country 
we  came  from  time  to  time  upon  some  grass- 
grown  cellar  where  a  farm-house  once  stood,  or 
counted,  within  the  circuit  of  a  mile  about  the 
corners  where  we  sojourned,  a  score  of  these 
monuments  of  adversity.  It  is  not  that  the  soil 
is  so  poor,  but  that  it  lacks  the  tilth  of  an  owner's 
hands.  How  shall  it  be  restored  to  prosperity? 
It  is  within  thirty-five  miles  of  Boston,  where  we 
all  know  to  our  sorrow  that  provisions  are  dearer 
than  anywhere  in  the  country,  —  not  to  specify 
the  whole  planet,  —  and  where  consequently  the 
best  market  is  ;  yet  the  land  grows  up  to  woods. 
Who  shall  inherit  this  legacy  of  the  Puritans,  won 
at  such  bitter  cost  from  the  wilderness?  Other 
races  and  another  religion,  it  appears ;  here  and 


ioo  THREE    VILLAGES. 

there  the  Irish  have  found  foothold ;  a  good 
part  of  the  population  is  Canadian ;  the  farm 
laborers  are  all  either  Irish  or  French. 

The  decay  of  numbers,  then,  which  the  Shak 
ers  confess  with  so  great  regret,  is  but  their  share 
of  the  common  blight,  and  how  to  arrest  it  is 
their  share  of  the  common  perplexity.  We  often 
touched  upon  this  subject,  which  they  face 
bravely  and  not  unhopefully,  and  yet  with  a  care 
concerning  it  that  was  not  less  than  touching. 
What  could  it  matter  to  those  childless  men 
and  women  whether  any  like  them  should  in 
herit  them  in  this  world,  to  which,  while  living, 
they  had  turned  so  cold  a  shoulder?  Very  little 
indeed,  one  would  have  said,  and  yet  they  were 
clearly  anxious  that  Shakerism  should  flourish 
after  them.  Their  anxiety  was  not  so  unnatural ; 
none  of  us  can  bear  to  think  of  leaving  the  fruits 
of  our  long  endeavor  to  chance  and  the  stranger. 
But  I  may  attribute  the  largest  share  of  the 
Shaker  reluctance  to  perish  from  the  earth  to 
zeal  for  the  perpetuation  of  the  true  faith,  —  faith 


SHIRLEY.  1 01 

which  was  founded,  like  all  others,  in  persecu 
tion,  built  up  amidst  ridicule  and  obloquy,  and 
now,  when  its  practical  expression  is  received 
with  respect  by  all  the  neighboring  world,  is  in 
some  danger  of  ceasing  among  men,  not  through 
the  indifference  of  believers,  but  through  their 
inevitable  mortal  decay.  There  are  several  rea 
sons  for  the  present  decrease,  besides  that  de 
crease  of  the  whole  rural  population  which  I  have 
mentioned.  The  impulse  of  the  age  is  towards 
a  scientific,  a  sensuous,  an  aesthetic  life.  Men 
no  longer  remain  on  the  lonely  farms,  or  in  the 
little  towns  where  they  were  born,  brooding 
upon  the  ways  of  God  to  man ;  if  they  think  of 
God,  it  is  too  often  to  despair  of  knowing  him  ; 
while  the  age  calls  upon  them  to  learn  this,  that, 
and  the  other,  to  get  gain  and  live  at  ease,  to 
buy  pianos  and  pictures,  and  take  books  out  of 
the  circulating  library.  The  new  condition  is 
always  vulgar,  and  amidst  the  modern  ferment 
we  may  look  back  upon  the  old  stagnation  and 
call  it  repose.  Whatever  it  was,  it  was  a  time 


102  THREE    VILLAGES. 

when  men's  minds  turned  fervidly  from  the  hard 
work-days  of  this  world  to  the  Sabbaths  of 
another;  from  the  winter,  the  wilderness,  the 
privation  of  New  England,  to  the  eternal  sum 
mer  and  glory  and  fruition  of  the  New  Jerusa 
lem.  How  to  get  there  was  their  care ;  it  was 
for  this  that  wives  and  husbands  rent  themselves . 
asunder,  and  shared  their  children  with  stran 
gers  ;  it  was  for  this  that  the  lover  left  his  love, 
and  the  young  girl  forbade  her  heart's  yearning ; 
we  may  be  sure  that  it  was  zeal  for  heaven,  for 
the  imagined  service  of  God,  that  built  up  the 
Shaker  communities. 

Their  peculiar  dress  remembers  the  now 
quaint  days  of  their  origin  ;  it  is  not  a  costume 
invented  or  assumed  by  them ;  it  is  the  Ameri 
can  dress  of  a  hundred  years  ago,  as  our  rustic 
great-grandparents  wore  it,  with  such  changes  as 
convenience,  not  fashion,  has  suggested  to  the 
Shakers  since.  With  all  its  quaintness  it  has  a 
charm  which  equally  appears  whether  it  is  worn 
by  old  or  by  young.  To  the  old,  the  modest 


SHIRLEY.  103 

soberness  of  the  colors,  the  white  kerchief  crossed 
upon  the  breast,  the  clean  stiff  cap,  were  singu 
larly  becoming ;  and  the  young  had  in  their 
simple  white  Sunday  dresses  a  look  of  maidenly 
purity  which  is  after  all  the  finest  ornament. 
The  colors  we  noticed  at  meeting  were  for  the 
young  mostly  white,  for  the  middle-aged  and 
elderly  the  subdued  tints  of  drab,  bronze,  and 
lead-color,  which  also  prevailed  with  the  men  of 
all  ages.  Both  sexes  wear  collars  that  cover  the 
whole  neck,  and  both  eschew  the  vanity  of  neck 
ties  ;  some  of  the  brothers  suffered  themselves 
the  gayety  of  showing  at  the  ends  of  their 
trousers- legs  the  brighter  selvage  of  the  cloth;  if 
indeed  this  was  a  gayety,  and  not,  as  one  clothed 
in  the  world's  taste  might  have  accounted  it,  an 
added  mortification  of  the  spirit. 

The  Shakers  used  to  spin  and  weave  all  the 
stuff  they  wore,  but  to  do  this  now  would  be  a 
waste  of  time ;  they  buy  the  alpaca  and  linen 
which  both  sexes  wear  in  summer,  and  their 
substantial  woollens  for  the  winter.  Some  relics 


104  THREE   VILLAGES. 

of  their  former  skill  and  taste  remain  in  the 
handsome  counterpanes  in  their  guest-chambers 
at  the  office,  which  were  dyed,  spun,  and  woven 
in  the  family,  and  the  sisters  are  still  skilled  in 
braiding  palm-leaf  hats  and  in  the  old-fashioned 
art  of  hooking  rugs.  But  I  would  not  persuade 
the  reader  that  any  Shaker  family  is  otherwise  a 
school  of  art ;  one  painting  I  did  indeed  see,  a 
vigorous  sketch  in  oil  of  a  Durham  bull,  but  this 
was  nailed  to  the  side  of  a  stall  far  up  in  the  vast 
gray  barn.  It  was  the  work  of  a  boy  who  was 
in  the  family  years  ago ;  but  he  never  became  a 
Shaker.  It  would  be  interesting  to  know  what 
he  did  become. 

In  a  community  it  must  be  that  the  individ 
ual  genius  is  largely  sacrificed  to  the  common 
purpose  and  tendency,  and  yet  I  believe  that 
among  the  Shakers  the  sacrifice  is  compelled 
only  by  the  private  conscience.  So  it  is  with 
regard  to  everything.  On  joining  the  commu 
nity  the  new  member  gives  up  nothing,  and  is 
cautioned  against  a  too  early  surrender  of  his 


SHIRLEY.  105 

property.  He  wears,  so  long  as  he  likes,  the 
fashions  of  the  world,  but  these  make  him  look 
as  odd  in  the  family  as  the  Shaker  dress  would 
outside  of  it,  and  he  is  commonly  anxious  to 
assume  the  garb  of  simplicity  before  his  mun 
dane  clothing  is  worn  out.  After  due  time  he 
may  give  his  property  to  the  family ;  if  he  ever 
leaves  it,  he  receives  back  the  principal  of  his 
contribution  without  interest ;  for  his  labor  he 
has  already  received  his  support.  There  are  no 
formalities  observed  when  a  new  brother  or  sister 
comes  among  the  Shakers.  It  is  understood 
that  they  are  to  go  as  freely  as  they  have  come ; 
and  this  provision  is  recalled,  as  a  rule  that 
works  both  ways,  to  the  mind  of  any  brother 
whose  room  is  finally  found  to  be  better  than  his 
company.  But  this  very  rarely  happens :  in 
twenty-five  years  Minister  Whiteley  had  been 
obliged  to  dismiss  only  one  undesirable  brother. 

The  whole  polity  of  the  family  is  very  simple. 
Its  affairs  are  conducted  by  trustees,  who  hold 
the  property  and  handle  the  funds,  and  to  whom 


io5  THREE    VILLAGES. 

any  member  goes  for  money  to  purchase  things 
not  provided  for  the  common  use.  Reasonable 
requests  of  this  sort  are  readily  allowed ;  but  it  is 
easy  to  understand  how  the  indulgence  of  even 
very  simple  private  tastes  adds  to  the  cost  of  the 
common  living,  already  enhanced  by  the  de 
crease  of  members,  and  the  necessity  of  keeping 
in  repair  the  buildings  left  only  partially  occu 
pied.  There  are  no  longer  carpenters,  black 
smiths,  and  shoemakers  among  the  Shakers  at 
Shirley,  because  their  work  can  be  more  cheaply 
performed  by  the  world-outside,  and  the  shops 
once  devoted  to  these  trades  now  stand  empty. 
The  community  still  has  the  advantage  of  buy 
ing  all  provisions  and  materials  at  wholesale 
prices,  but  I  doubt  whether  the  cost  of  living 
within  it  is  much  less  than  it  is  among  its  un- 
communized  neighbors.  This,  however,  is  an 
impression  for  which  I  have  not  the  figures. 

At  the  head  of  each  family  there  is  an  elder 
and  an  eldress,  to  whom  all  complaints  are  first 
addressed,  and  by  whom  difficulties  are  settled. 


SHIRLEY.  107 

I  believe  there  is  also  a  species  of  confessional, 
in  which  those  who  desire  can  confide  their 
repentance  and  good  intentions  to  the  elders. 
Disputes  in  which  the  decision  of  the  elders  is 
not  satisfactory  are  appealed  to  the  ministers, 
whose  mind  is  final  in  such  matters.  Of  these 
ministers  there  are  three,  two  being  sisters ;  they 
reside  alternate  months  in  Shirley  and  Harvard, 
and  have  completely  appointed  dwelling-houses 
in  both  communities.  I  could  not  see  that  they 
took  a  more  prominent  part  in  public  worship 
than  the  elders,  and  I  do  not  know  in  what  their 
religious  eminence  consists,  but  they  are  held  in 
peculiar  regard  by  the  community. 

Of  course,  nothing  like  ceremony  must  be 
inferred  concerning  the  expression  of  this  regard. 
They,  and  all  the  other  brothers  and  sisters, 
are  addressed  by  their  first  names,  and  it  is 
liked  that  strangers  in  addressing  the  Shakers 
should  be  simple  and  direct,  eschewing  the 
forms  and  titles  which  could  not  be  accorded  in 
return.  The  speech  of  the  Shakers  is  Yea,  yea, 


io8  THREE    VILLAGES. 

and  Nay,  nay  (they  pronounce  the  former  words 
yee,  yee,  for  reasons  of  their  own),  but  it  does  not 
otherwise  vary  from  the  surrounding  Yankee. 
They  are  plain  and  homely  in  their  phrase,  but 
they  are  very  courteous,  and  it  is  impossible  to 
know  them  and  not  perceive  how  little  polite 
ness  consists  in  the  tedious  palaver  that  com 
monly  passes  by  that  name.  Their  sincerity 
gives  them  dignity  and  repose ;  it  appears  that 
you  have  but  to  renounce  the  world,  and  you 
cannot  be  afraid  of  it. 

I  should  be  sorry  to  give  the  notion  of  a 
gloomy  asceticism  in  the  Shaker  life.  I  saw 
nothing  of  this,  though  I  saw  self-restraint,  dis 
cipline,  quiet,  and  heard  sober,  considered,  con 
scientious  speech.  They  had  their  jesting,  also ; 
and  those  brothers  and  sisters  who  were  of  a 
humorous  mind  seemed  all  the  better  liked  for 
their  gift  of  laughing  and  making  laugh.  The 
sum  of  Shaker  asceticism  is  this  :  they  neither 
marry  nor  give  in  marriage ;  but  this  is  a  good 
deal.  Certain  things  they  would  think  indecor- 


SHIRLEY.  109 

ous  rather  than  wicked,  and  I  do  not  suppose 
a  Shaker  would  go  twice  to  the  opera  bouffe ; 
but  such  an  entertainment  as  a  lecture  by  our 
right-hearted  humorist,  Mark  Twain,  had  been 
attended  by  one  of  the  brethren  not  only  with 
out  self-reproach,  but  with  great  enjoyment. 
They  had  also  some  of  them  read  Mr.  Bret 
Harte's  books  without  apparent  fear  of  con 
sequences.  They  are  rather  strict  in  the  ob 
servance  of  the  Sabbath,  but  not  so  much,  I 
thought,  from  conscience  as  from  custom. 

Our  Shaker  friends  are  sometimes  embarrassed 
by  visitors  who  ask  to  be  shown  all  over  their 
buildings,  forgetting  that  their  houses  are  private 
houses ;  and  I  cannot  promise  the  curious  reader 
visiting  Shirley  a  repetition  of  the  favors  done 
us,  whom  the  Shakers  were  good  enough  to 
show  all  of  their  communal  life  that  one  could 
see.  In  each  village  is  an  edifice  known  as 
the  Dwelling- House,  which  is  separate  from  the 
office  and  the  other  buildings.  In  this  are  the 
rooms  of  the  brothers  and  sisters,  the  kitchen 


no  THREE    VILLAGES. 

and  dining-room,  and  a  large  room  for  family 
meetings.  The  first  impression  of  all  is  cleanli 
ness,  with  a  suggestion  of  bareness  which  is  not 
inconsistent,  however,  with  comfort,  and  which 
comes  chiefly  from  the  aspect  of  the  unpapered 
walls,  the  scrubbed  floors  hidden  only  by  rugs 
and  strips  of  carpeting,  and  the  plain,  flat  finish 
of  the  wood-work.  Each  chamber  accommo 
dates  two  brothers  or  two  sisters,  and  is  ap 
pointed  with  two  beds,  two  rocking-chairs,  two 
wash-stands,  and  a  wood-stove,  with  abundance 
of  rugs.  The  rooms  of  the  younger  people  are 
above,  so  that  (as  was  explained  to  us)  if  the 
young  sisters,  especially,  wish  to  talk  after  they 
go  to  bed,  they  need  not  disturb  their  elders. 
There  were  few  tokens  of  personal  taste  in  the 
arrangement  of  the  rooms ;  the  most  decided 
expression  of  character  was  that  of  the  nonagen 
arian,  who  required  his  bed  to  be  made  up  with 
a  hollow  in  the  middle  from  top  to  bottom, 
which  he  called  his  trough,  and  which  he  strictly 
forbade  any  one  to  meddle  with  ;  that  was  all  he 


SHIRLEY.  in 

asked  of  earth  after  ninety-six  years,  not  to  dis 
turb  his  trough.  It  seemed  right  that  the  simple 
demand  should  be  indulged. 

The  dining-room  was  provided  with  two  large 
tables,  at  one  of  which  the  brothers  sat,  and 
at  the  other  the  sisters.  The  monastic  rule 
of  silence  at  meals  is  observed,  because,  as  we 
were  told,  the  confusion  would  be  too  great  if 
all  talked  together.  In  the  kitchen  was  an  im 
mense  cook-stove,  with  every  housekeeping  con 
venience  ;  and  everywhere  opened  pantry  and 
store-room  doors,  with  capacious  cellars  under 
neath —  all  scoured  and  scrubbed  to  the  last 
degree  of  neatness. 

The  family  menage  is  completed  by  a  wash- 
house  and  a  dairy-house ;  there  is  an  infirmary, 
and  a  shop  for  women's  work,  and  under  the 
same  roof  with  the  latter,  at  Shirley,  a  large 
school-room,  in  which  the  children  of  the  com 
munity  are  taught  the  usual  English  branches  by 
Sister  Rose.  The  Shaker  village  forms  a  school- 
district,  and  their  school  is  under  the  control  of 
the  town  committee. 


112  THREE    VILLAGES. 

One  day,  toward  the  end  of  our  sojourn,  the 
office-sisters  asked  us  to  spend  an  afternoon  and 
take  tea  with  them.  After  tea  we  sat  down  in 
the  office- parlor,  and  the  best  singers  of  the 
family  came  in  with  their  music  books,  and  sang 
those  tunes  which  we  had  severally  liked  most. 
It  was  all  done  with  the  friendliest  simplicity, 
and  we  could  not  but  be  charmed  Most  of  the 
singers  were  young  girls,  who  looked  their  best 
in  fresh  white  dresses  and  fresh  gauze  caps ;  and 
Elder  William,  Brother  Lorenzo,  and  Brother 
Thomas  were  there  in  Sabbath  trim.  One  song 
followed  another  till  long  after  dark,  and  then 
there  was  a  little  commotion :  the  married  sister 
of  one  of  the  young  Shakeresses  arrived  with  her 
baby  to  spend  the  night.  She  was  young  and 
pretty,  and  was  duly  tied  back,  overskirted,  and 
furbelowed,  and  her  little  one  was  arrayed  in  its 
finest,  when  by  and  by  she  came  into  the  room 
where  we  sat.  By  some  juggle  the  baby  found 
himself  on  the  knees  of  one  of  the  brothers, 
and  sat  looking  up  into  his  weather-beaten  face 


SHIRLEY.  113 

with  a  kindly  embarrassment  which  the  good 
brother  plainly  shared,  while  the  white  dresses 
and  white  caps  of  the  sisters  flocked  round 
in  worship  of  that  deplorable  heir  of  the  Adamic 
order  of  life ;  his  mother  stood  outside  of  the 
group  with  complacently  folded  hands.  Some 
how  the  sight  was  pathetic.  If  she  were  right 
and  they  wrong,  how  much  of  heaven  they  had 
lost  in  renouncing  the  supreme  good  of  earth  ! 


GNADENHUTTEN. 


GNADENHUTTEN. 


T  HOPE  that  it  is  something  better  than  an 
idle  love  of  picturesque  and  ancient  days 
that  prompts  me  to  cast  a  glimmer  of  their 
light  on  this  page,  and  trace  the  origin  of  a 
poor  little  Indian  village  that  flourished  and 
fell,  beyond  the  Ohio,  ninety  years  ago,  to  that 
remote  century,  when  the  Paulician  fathers, 
Chyrillus  and  Methodius,  went  out  of  Constan 
tinople  and  established  Christianity  among  the 
heathen  of  Moravia.  The  fate  of  Gnadenhiitten 
is  so  dolorous  in  itself  that  I  have  no  need  to 
borrow  pathos  of  the  past ;  yet  I  own  that  its 
obscure  troubles  have  a  peculiar  interest  to  me 
in  their  relation  to  those  of  a  people  whose  seat 


Ii8  THREE    VILLAGES. 

was  in  the  world's  most  famous  places,  and 
whose  heroes'  and  martyrs'  names  are  quick  in 
all  men's  minds. 

The  annals  of  the  Moravian  Church  link  in 
the  same  chain  of  sorrows  and  calamities  the 
burning  of  Huss  at  Constance  and  the  mur 
der  of  the  hapless  Christian  Indians  on  the 
Muskingum;  and  if  they  cannot  make  them 
equal  sharers  with  him  in  the  glory  of  martyr 
dom,  they  declare  their  death  equally  magnani 
mous  and  saintly,  their  faith  as  great,  and  their 
spirit  the  same.  It  was  this  spirit,  at  once  zeal 
ous  and  patient,  which  made  the  Moravian 
Church  first  among  the  missionary  churches,  and 
which  early  in  its  history  awakened  persecution 
against  it.  Indeed,  the  Moravians  were  scarcely 
converted  to  Christianity  in  860,  when  Rome 
assailed  them  with  all  the  reasons  of  popes  and 
kings,  and  the  fagot  and  sword  were  constantly 
employed  against  people  whose  bodies  at  least 
would  have  remained  much  more  comfortable  if 
they  had  continued  heathen  instead  of  becoming 


G NA  DENHUTTEN.  1 1 9 

heretics.  Their  chances  of  heaven  may  have 
been  impaired,  in  the  opinion  of  their  persecu 
tors,  if  that  were  possible,  when,  after  two  hun 
dred  years  of  suffering,  they  united  with  the 
Waldenses,  in  Bohemia;  but  the  chances  of 
being  burned  alive  were  unquestionably  dimin 
ished  by  this  union,  and  there  was  no  more 
persecution  of  either  sect  till  Rome  began  to  feel 
the  first  movements  of  the  Reformation  within 
herself.  The  Moravian  Church  then  became  es 
pecially  obnoxious  to  her,  and  she  determined 
to  uproot  that  heresy.  So  it  came  to  the  mar 
tyrdom  of  Huss  and  of  Jerome,  and  of  many 
more  unremembered,  and  at  last  to  the  armed 
resistance  of  the  Moravians  under  Zisca.  When 
Zisca  died,  the  persecuted  people  quarrelled 
among  themselves,  and  divided  into  the  Tabo- 
rites,  who  held  for  a  pure  Scriptural  church,  and 
the  Calixtines,  who  were  received  into  the  Ro 
man  Church  with  the  promise  of  certain  privi 
leges  afterward  only  partially  or  never  fulfilled ; 
but  a  part  of  the  Taborites  and  a  body  of  the 


120  THREE    VILLAGES. 

Calixtines  came  together  again,  and  called  their 
new  band  Unitas  Fratrum,  and  so  eagerly  de 
voted  themselves  to  the  work  of  conversion, 
that  the  Romish  Calixtines  stirred  up  a  new 
persecution.  The  temporal  power  refused  the 

4 

United  Brethren  its  protection ;  their  civil  rights 
were  forfeited,  the  prisons  were  filled  with  them ; 
they  were  driven  from  their  homes  in  midwinter, 
and  reduced  to  scattered  remnants  that  dwelt  in 
the  forests  and  the  uninhabited  places,  kindling 
fires  only  by  night,  lest  the  element  that  saved 
them  from  one  death  should  betray  them  to 
another  yet  more  cruel.  These  fugitives  finally 
met  together  in  the  wilderness,  to  the  number  of 
seventy,  and  reaffirmed  their  fealty  to  their  an 
cient  church,  and  their  preference  for  the  episco 
pal  over  the  presbyterian  constitution.  Through 
the  Paulician  fathers,  first  sent  to  them,  and 
again  through  their  union  with  the  Waldenses, 
they  traced  an  episcopal  succession,  hitherto  un 
broken,  up  to  the  apostles  themselves ;  and 
now,  casting  lots  for  such  of  their  number  as 


GNADENHUTTEN.  121 

should  receive  the  succession,  they  sent  these 
secretly  to  the  Waldensen  bishop,  Stephen  in 
Austria,  who  consecrated  them. 

After  Stephen  was  burnt,  many  Waldenses 
united  with  the  Moravians,  and,  in  the  midst  of 
persecutions,  they  re-entered  upon  their  career 
as  a  missionary  church.  They  published  the 
Bohemian  Bible  in  1470,  and  they  multiplied 
copies  of  the  Scriptures  at  two  printing-offices  in 
Bohemia  and  one  in  Moravia. 

Luther,  after  a  preliminary  quarrel  with  them 
about  discipline,  received  a  copy  of  their  con 
fession  of  faith,  and  acknowledged  them  worthy 
of  all  Christian  love,  a  little  before  Charles  V., 
declaring  them  worthy  of  all  Christian  hate, 
because  he  believed  they  influenced  the  Bo 
hemians  in  their  refusal  to  fight  against  the 
Protestant  Elector  of  Saxony,  confiscated  their 
property,  outlawed  their  nobles,  and  racked  their 
bishops.  Their  sufferings  continued  throughout 
the  Thirty  Years'  War,  and  at  its  close  the  Prot 
estant  powers  abandoned  them  to  the  fury  of 


122  THREE   VILLAGES. 

Austria,  who  disposed  so  effectively  of  their  pes 
tilent  Bibles  and  other  books,  of  their  churches 
and  their  schools,  that  she  might  well  believe 
herself  to  have  extirpated  them.  Their  Bishop 
Comenius,  however,  escaped  to  England,  where 
he  was  received  with  all  affection  and  respect 
by  the  Anglican  clergy,  and  whence  he  went 
later  to  Holland,  where  he  wrote  the  history  of 
his  church.  Before  he  died  he  caused  the  ordi 
nation  of  two  bishops,  and  thus  transmitted  the 
apostolic  succession  to  the  church  in  our  times, 
through  the  few  Brethren  whom  that  devout 
man,  Count  Zinzendorf,  found  at  Fulneck  in  Bo 
hemia,  and  invited  to  a  safer  and  quieter  abode 
on  his  vast  estates  at  Bertholsdorf.  There,  in 
1722,  they  founded  their  famous  hamlet  of 
Herrnhut,  and  established  their  church  once 
more  in  the  ardor  of  its  zeal  and  hope. 

They  were  for  the  most  part  simple  peas 
ant  folk  and  artisans,  but  they  were  afterward 
joined  by  scholars  and  people  of  condition  from 
all  parts  of  Germany.  It  appears  they  did  not 


GArA  DENHUTTEN.  1 2  3 

in  all  cases  bear  their  peace  and  security  with  so 
great  dignity  as  they  had  borne  their  sorrows 
and  wrongs.  They  sometimes  fell  into  silly  ec 
stasies  of  devotion,  and  permitted  themselves  a 
latitude  of  metaphor  and  expression  that  scan 
dalized  the  whole  Protestant  world,  —  the  excel 
lent  Protestant  world,  that  had  given  them  up  to 
their  mortal  enemies,  and  had  endured  their 
calamities  with  such  exemplary  fortitude.  Zin- 
zendorf  was  himself  an  enthusiast,  and  unwit 
tingly  provoked  the  weaker  Brethren  to  this 
verbal  and  sentimental  excess,  though  he  was 
afterwards  first  and  severest  in  rebuking  it,  when 
the  clamor  rose  against  it.  The  offending 
zealots  owned  their  indecorousness,  and  sent 
their  apology  to  the  other  Protestant  churches. 
Their  folly  had  never  passed  beyond  words ; 
and  in  the  mean  time  the  works  of  the  Mora 
vian  community  were  of  a  character  to  win  it 
our  profoundest  respect,  if  they  did  not  attract 
so  much  contemporary  attention. 

During  the  first  ten  years  after  their  coloniza- 


124 

~on  on  Count  Zmzendoif  s  estates,  and  while 
n<r  T  yet  numbered  bat  six  hundred,  the  \Ion- 
zaisskmanes  to  aH  pests  of  die  heathen 
world,  to  Greenland,  to  the  West  Indies,  to 
Tartary.  :  o  Lapland,  to  Guinea,  to  the  Cape  of 
Good  Hope,  to  Ceylon,  and  to  North  America. 
T.-rir  zii-iimnei  f^:  L^-ici  -.:-•;-  :  i:  ::r.::- 
nent  at  Savannah  in  1735,  anc*  attempted  the 
coofexsionof  the  neighbofing  Creeks,  but  with 
drew  to  Pennsylvania  a  few  years  later,  and 
founded  then-  town  of  Bethlehem,  and  entered 

"  •  I  ~    1J1  r  IT  TlLlif  1  1-  __  ~  .    T_~  r     _  r  _L  •  IT  rf  .         -  ~.  :"  .  .  I  I 
l_""zr~  ~  I.~  Li:    "Jlr:r   r~:l"rf!     ="J.lIrfr    •'-.'.'.    ~..L-i:   ~.~.     r  : 

bat  the  first  Indian  community  seems  to  have 


meko  in  New  York  and  Fichgatgoch  in  Con- 
-r:::r;:.  i.-.rTt  ^r  er.ns  ::"  :  r  ^rt_.rrz  :":r 
die  confersion  and  cffifizatiaii  of  the  Tndiaias 

-_-i.—  :     ::>-  :   r  ^vi^rs  :-  i 
to  such  a  degree  that  nothing  bat 

ii  e:    :-.r    _-::i±r    fr:~ 
i    :r.t:   :;r.t-:e    ;: 


125 


j:iv± 

-ey  ^ere  \r:rrri::  1^1  r; 
11-5  i'_  :  ::  Ci^iri^;  _:,  .z^:  i:  ^r.: 
::.ty  -tre  in'-iTi:  ~::  *-r  'rrrriir  ::"  lie 
_  :  rrr.  ;  r.  ~T.  :  :r:~_"_y  _:eri.:r_  i2r~.  it: 
:>.ty  ::_:i  -re:  :.;  :  r  ::  :«e  frrr  friz:  ~:Ier_i- 
:'-rr=  ir.t  7*1  Irr^  ^nriifi  iht  ri  ijr-  :: 
ipt  their  lives.  2sd  tbe 


was  averse  to  nscar 

in  the    Province   of  Xew   York   tbe 

;i~ifT".;r.   i_~.ii    !~7'     -  trt    jrrr.in 

"...r.-l    15    _TTrl1    IT."  ___  r     .Ir     U\r^7    rrT'llr-     -  1"  .r-ITV 

_     ~-~~  r*I1__l  -~"         *     "  ""1    _  1~  "*      ~r  —  fc—      H"ZL~ 


about  taking  oaAs;  and  tbe  Psrori 


1-1:1  :in.^_z^  ir:z:   N;™  V  :  :>  il 
--;   refill  ihe    ;i"    :•:"  iLrrnzrf.  izi  f:r;:i- 

~   "*          "~  —       '-  •     ^  ^  -  -  —  -  —-  —^      -  -  —  ^  —  -  -  -  »  ^,          —          -^—  ^ 

.  ^. 


•:_   r_-rii,   :eiz  ::   -?_~r 


126  THREE    VILLAGES. 

that  character  of  spiritual  capital  still  belonging 
to  it  among  the  Moravians.  The  whites  near 
Shekomeko  at  once  seized  upon  the  lands  of 
the  Indian  converts ;  and  it  is  consoling  to 
know  that  a  pious  struggle  for  their  souls  ensued 
between  the  local  Christians  and  the  local  sav 
ages,  the  former  striving  to  attach  the  converts  to 
their  churches,  and  the  latter  to  drag  them  back 
into  heathenism.1  The  savages,  however,  got 
nothing  at  all;  and  the  Christians,  nothing  but 
the  land ;  for,  after  a  great  deal  of  suffering  and 
molestation,  the  converts  thought  best  to  follow 
their  teachers  to  Bethlehem. 

The  Moravians  were  now  confined  in  their 
enterprise  to  the  Province  of  Pennsylvania, 
where  the  precedent  of  the  Friends  had  already 
so  far  depraved  public  sentiment,  that  it  was 
possible  for  them  not  only  to  refuse  oaths  and 
military  service,  but  to  pursue  their  benevolent 

1  History  of  the  Mission  of  the  United  Brethren  among  the 
Indians  in  North  America.  In  Three  Parts.  By  George 
Henry  Loskiel.  Translated  from  the  German  by  Christian 
Ignatius  La  Trobe.  London,  1794. 


GNA  DEN1IUTTEN.  1 2  7 

efforts  among  the  Indians  without  incurring  so 
much  resentment  as  in  Connecticut  and  New 
York. 

This,  however,  was  but  for  a  time.  Many 
Scriptural-minded  colonists  of  that  day  held  that 
the  Indians  were  Canaanities ;  and  many  others, 
who  knew  enough  of  God  to  swear  by,  inter 
preted  the  Divine  will  to  the  extinction,  not  the 
conversion,  of  the  heathen.  The  French  War 
broke  out,  and  it  appeared  certain  to  all  these 
that  people  who  treated  the  Indians  with  love 
and  kindness,  whereas  God  had  imposed  no 
duty  toward  them  but  the  simple  and  elemen 
tary  obligation  of  destruction,  must  in  reason  be 
French  spies ;  while  the  heathen,  on  the  other 
hand,  took  it  into  their  wrong,  thick  heads  that 
the  Moravians  must  be  the  foes  of  their  race, 
and  secretly  leagued  with  the  English,  being  of 
such  an  inimical  color  as  they  were.  The 
savages,  therefore,  fell  upon  a  Moravian  station 
on  the  river  Mahony,  and  killed  all  the  Breth 
ren,  with  their  wives  and  children,  whom  they 


128  THREE    VILLAGES. 

found  there.  This  unsettled  the  colonial  mind 
somewhat  concerning  their  complicity  with  the 
French,  but  did  nothing  to  disabuse  it  of  other 
prejudices.  Some  murders  committed  on  the 
border  exasperated  the  feeling  against  the  con 
verts  to  such  degree  that  it  was  judged  best  by 
their  teachers  to  abandon  their  exposed  and 
isolated  villages,  and  place  themselves  under  the 
protection  of  the  troops  at  Philadelphia.  But 
when  they  repaired  to  the  barracks,  with  the 
governor's  order  for  their  admission,  the  soldiers 
would  not  let  them  enter,  and  they  remained  a 
whole  night  before  the  gate,  exposed  to  the 
insults  and  outrages  of  the  mob  that  gathered 
about  them,  and  that  threatened  to  revenge  on 
these  helpless  folk  the  crimes  and  injuries  of 
the  savages.  They  were  then  sent  to  Province 
Island,  where  they  were  lodged  for  some  months 
in  comparative  safety  and  comfort ;  but  about 
the  beginning  of  the  year  1764  orders  came 
from  the  government  for  their  removal  to 
New  York,  and,  very  scantily  clad,  and  burdened 


GNADENHUTTEN.  1 2  9 

with  their  old  and  sick,  they  set  out  on  a 
journey  which  was  attended  with  exposure  not 
only  to  the  seventy  of  the  winter,  but  to  the 
contumely  of  the  mobs  that  followed  them  in  all 
the  stupid  and  wicked  little  towns,  and  assem 
bled  to  revile  them  as  they  passed  along  their 
route. 

They  had  not  reached  the  New  York  frontier, 
however,  when  they  were  met  by  a  messenger 
from  the  governor  of  that  Province,  forbidding 
them  to  cross  it;  and  so  they  returned  upon 
their  weary  steps  to  Philadelphia,  where  the 
authorities  now  succeeded  in  lodging  them  in 
the  barracks.  For  no  other  reason  than  that 
they  were  Indians,  and  with  scarcely  the  pre 
tence  of  any  other  reason,  a  mob  assembled  to 
destroy  them,  and  nothing  but  the  most  prompt 
and  energetic  measures  on  the  part  of  the 
military  and  the  better  citizens  saved  them. 
The  danger  was  so  great,  and  the  intended 
outrage  so  abominable,  that  even  some  of  the 
younger  Quakers  took  up  arms  in  defence  of  a 
9 


130  THREE    VILLAGES. 

people  whose  use  and  creed  would  not  permit 
them  to  defend  themselves ;  and  indeed  the 
Quakers,  throughout  the  unmerited  sufferings  of 
these  harmless  Indians,  were  their  true  and 
steadfast  friends,  insomuch  that  one  of  them 
said,  Even  the  sight  of  a  Quaker  made  him 
happy.  In  this,  as  in  other  things,  the  Friends 
bore  witness  to  the  superior  civilization  of  their 
sect,  and  to  the  faithful  and  generous  spirit  of 
their  relations  with  the  Indians,  at  which  it  has 
in  these  days  grown  easy  and  cheap  to  sneer. 
Next  to  the  drab-coats  it  was  the  red-coats  that 
treated  the  Christian  Indians  with  the  greatest 
tenderness  and  respect,  and  in  effect  protected 
them  against  the  popular  fury,  until  the  end  of 
the  war,  which  came  in  December,  1764,  after 
they  had  been  under  arrest  a  whole  year.  They 
were  then  set  at  liberty,  the  danger  from  par 
tisans  of  either  side  being  past ;  and  with  greatly 
enfeebled  numbers  (fifty-six  had  died  of  small 
pox  during  the  summer)  they  repaired  to  a  point 
on  the  Susquehanna,  in  what  is  now  Bradford 


GXADENHUTTEN.  131 

County,  and  there  founded  their  first  considera 
ble  town.  The  Indian  name  of  the  place  was 
Wyalusing ;  but  the  Moravians,  out  of  their 
thankful  and  hopeful  hearts,  called  it  Frieden- 
shiitten,  or  Tents  of  Peace.  It  is  needless  to 
relate  at  length  how  their  hopes  were  turned  to 
despair,  as  the  whites  encroached  upon  them, 
and  the  traders  attempted  to  make  their  village 
a  rendezvous  whence  they  might  debauch  and 
plunder  the  neighboring  savages.  The  great 
blow  to  their  tranquillity  and  confidence  was  the 
sale  of  the  whole  region  round  about  them, 
which  was  ceded  to  the  English  by  the  Iro- 
quois,  in  violation  of  the  solemn  promises  of 
that  truculent  and  faithless  tribe  confirming  the 
Christians  in  the  possession  of  the  lands  on 
which  they  had  settled.  The  Moravians  had  al 
ready  extended  their  operations  westward  as  far 
as  the  Ohio,  and  had  a  prosperous  station  on 
Beaver  Creek,  and  there  now  came  to  them,  for 
the  third  time,  messages  from  the  chiefs  of  the 
Delawares,  inviting  them  to  establish  a  mission 


I32  T PI  REE    VILLAGES. 

in  their  country.  The  Lennilenape,  as  they 
called  themselves,  were  then  a  numerous  and 
powerful  people,  in  alliance  with  many  impor 
tant  tribes,  who,  having  abandoned  Pennsyl 
vania,  where  they  were  subject  to  the  Iroquois, 
now  inhabited  a  vast  and  fertile  country  about 
midway  between  the  Ohio  River  and  Lake  Erie, 
and  had  their  principal  towns  on  the  Walhond- 
ing  and  Tuscarawas,  whose  confluence  forms  the 
Muskingum.  It  was  from  these  capitals  that 
the  invitation  came  to  the  Christians  at  Frie- 
denshiitten,  offering  them  lands  and  the  protec 
tion  of  the  Delaware  nation,  with  full  and  free 
opportunity  to  the  missionaries  of  preaching  the 
gospel  and  introducing  the  arts  of  peace.  The 
messages  added  that  the  land  should  never  be 
alienated  from  them,  as  it  had  been  at  Frieden- 
shiitten  by  the  Iroquois ;  and  both  teachers  and 
people  saw  that  in  this  invitation,  from  one  of 
the  mildest  and  most  intelligent  of  the  Indian 
nations,  a  great  and  smiling  field  of  usefulness 
opened  to  them,  remote  alike  from  the  evil 


GNA  DENHUTTEiV.  1 3  3 

influences  of  the  border  and  the  bad  faith  and 
secret  enmity  of  the  Iroquois.  It  was  true,  the 
governor  of  Pennsylvania  had  assured  them  that 
they  should  never  be  molested  in  the  tenure  of 
their  lands,  and  had  forbidden  the  survey  of  any 
territory  within  five  miles  of  their  villages  on  the 
Susquehanna ;  but  their  experience  of  the  colo 
nists  had  taught  them  to  distrust,  not  the  good 
will,  but  the  strength  of  their  authorities.  Still 
less  were  the  Moravians  disposed  to  listen  to  the 
remonstrances  and  repentant  prayers  of  the  Iro 
quois,  who  now  besought  them  not  to  abandon 
their  country.  They  heard  the  Delaware  em 
bassy  with  favor,  and  sent  out  to  Ohio  David 
Zeisberger,  their  leading  missionary,  and  five 
Indian  families  to  look  at  the  land  offered 
them ;  and  these  arriving  on  the  Tuscarawas 
made  choice  of  a  tract  which,  when  they  de 
scribed  it  to  the  Delaware  chiefs,  proved  to 
be  the  very  land  destined  to  them  by  the 
nation. 

The  pioneers  found  the  soil  of  their  allotted 


134  THREE    VILLAGES. 

• 

domain  excellent,1  and  the  game  abundant  in 
the  forest,  and  with  well-contented  hearts  they 
built  themselves  cabins,  and  laid  out  their  peace 
ful  city  on  the  site  of  an  old  Indian  town,  long 
since  deserted  and  falling  to  decay.  Ramparts 
and  other  traces  of  ancient  fortification  were  still 
visible  beside  the  small  lake  where  the  gentle 
Moravian  and  his  followers  planned  their  home, 
and  from  the  heart  of  the  ruin  burst  forth 
that  beautiful  spring  for  which  he  named  their 
city,  Schonbrunn.  All  round  them  stood  the 
primeval,  many-centuried  woods ;  the  river, 
never  vexed  by  keel,  flowed  beside  them  from 
solitude  to  solitude ;  even  the  lodges  of  their 
savage  hosts  and  benefactors  were  a  day's  jour 
ney  out  of  sight. 

1  The  gallant  Colonel  Bouquet,  who  penetrated  to  the  Mus- 
kingum  country,  at  the  head  of  a  small  army,  some  eight  years 
before  Zeisberger's  arrival,  and  forced  the  Delawares  to  make 
peace  and  deliver  their  prisoners  to  him,  found  the  whole  region 
surpassingly  fertile  and  attractive,  watered  by  fine  streams  and 
springs,  and  dotted  with  "savannahs  or  cleared  spots,  which 
are  by  nature  extremely  beautiful." 


GNADENHVTTEN.  135 

It  was  in  April,  1772,  and  in  the  summer  of 
the  same  year  the  whole  community  of  Friedens- 
hiitten  abandoned  their  houses  and  farms,  and 
departed  on  their  long  pilgrimage  through  the 
wilderness,  to  seek  the  country  given  them  beside 
the  Muskingum ;  and  though  their  historians  set 

down 

"  The  short  and  simple  annals  of  the  poor  " 

in  terms  something  of  the  driest,  yet  an  irrepres 
sible  pathos  communicates  itself  to  the  reader 
as  these  writers  tell  how  they  all  left  their  beloved 
village  on  the  Wyalusing  to  the  malice  of  men 
and  elements,  and  trusted  themselves  to  the 
promise  of  the  desert.  At  Friedenshiitten  they 
had  dwelt  seven  happy,  prosperous  years,  which 
they  had  employed  so  well  that  their  town  wore 
a  substantial  and  smiling  aspect,  with  its  great 
street  eighty  feet  wide,  and  its  lines  of  pretty 
cottages,  —  "built  of  squared  pine  logs,"  and 
flanked  by  gardens,  —  radiating  from  the  spa 
cious  chapel  in  the  midst ;  while  around  it  on 
every  hand  rippled  their  yellow  wheat,  and  the 


136  THREE    VILLAGES. 

broad  acres  of  bladed  corn  spread  their  serried 
ranks.  The  green  fruit  mantled  to  ripeness  in 
their  generous  orchards,  and  all  the  flattery  of 
harvest  was  in  the  landscape  from  which  this 
poor  little  people  turned  their  heavy  eyes. 

They  must,  of  course,  leave  the  greater  part 
of  their  substance,  but  such  things  as  were  most 
necessary  or  most  portable  they  carried  with 
them,  and  departed  a  heavily  laden  train,  bear 
ing  each  one  his  burden,  and  all  driving  their 
well-freighted  horses  and  their  flocks  and  herds 
before  them.  Hundreds  of  miles  of  unbroken 
wilderness  stretched  between  Friedenshiitten 
and  the  land  of  promise ;  and  their  path  was 
beset,  not  only  by  the  sylvan  beasts,  but.  by  the 
wild  brethren  of  the  new  Christians.  The  con 
verts  had  all  the  toils  and  fatigues  of  the  pil 
grimage  to  bear,  and  they  must  have  often  found 
a  potent  fascination  in  the  desert,  where  the 
wildness  without  allured  the  wildness  within 
them,  and  pleaded  eloquently  for  their  return 
to  the  allegiance  of  the  woods.  But  they  none 


GNADENHtfTTEN.  137 

of  them  faltered  in  obedience  to  the  pious  and 
humble  teachers  who  led  them,  neither  for  love 
of  the  desert  if  it  beguiled,  nor  for  fear  of  the 
drunken  savages,  who  sometimes  molested  their 
march. 

The  pilgrims  were  far  from  suffering  from 
hunger,  for  they  killed  a  hundred  deer  upon 
their  journey ;  but  their  course  was  through 
tangled  depths  of  woodland  and  morass,  across 
floods,  and  over  mountains,  and  their  steps  were 
always  in  peril  of  rattlesnakes,  which  infested 
the  wilderness  in  great  numbers.  Those  who 
journeyed  by  land  fared  not  more  painfully  and 
slowly  than  others  of  the  brethren  who  de 
scended  the  rivers  towards  the  Ohio  in  heavily 
laden  canoes,  and  over  the  long  portages  or 
beside  the  shrinking  streams  carried  craft  and 
freight  alike  upon  their  shoulders. 

Heckewelder,1  who  tells  us  this  much,   tells 

1  A  narrative  of  the  mission  of  the  United  Brethren  among 
the  Delaware  and  Mohican  Indians,  from  its  Commencement 
in  the  Year  1740  to  the  Close  of  the  Year  1808.  Comprising 


138  THREE    VILLAGES. 

little  of  all  that  it  would  now  be  so  interesting 
to  know  of  this  strange  pilgrimage,  nor  do  other 
Moravian  writers,  except  in  a  dry  and  general 
way,  touch  upon  its  events,  at  best  vaguely 
sketching  a  picture  which  the  reader's  fancy 
must  fill  up.  Their  thoughts  are  doubtless  upon 
the  things  of  which  these  wanderings  were  but 
the  shadow  and  symbol ;  yet  here  and  there  a 
touch  illumines  the  whole  with  a  vivid  and 
purely  human  interest.  Such  a  one  shows  us 
a  certain  poor  mother,  who  took  her  crippled 
son  upon  her  shoulder,  and  so  set  out  from 
Friedenshiitten  with  the  rest,  and  bore  him 
many  and  many  days'  journey  through  the 
desert.  Sickness  appeared  among  the  pilgrims, 
and  some  of  the  little  ones  drooped  and  died ; 
and  that  which  shall  one  day  ease  us  all  of  our 

all  the  remarkable  Incidents  which  took  place  at  their  Mission 
ary  Stations  during  that  Period.  Interspersed  with  Anecdotes, 
Historical  Facts,  Speeches  of  Indians,  and  other  Interesting 
Matter,  by  John  Heckewelder,  who  was  many  Years  in  the 
Service  of  that  Mission.  Philadelphia :  McCarty  and  Davis. 
1820. 


GNADE  NHUTTEN.  1 3  9 

burdens,  whether  they  console  or  whether  they 
oppress  us,  drew  softly  near  the  crippled  boy. 
Day  after  day  the  poor  mother  found  the  load 
upon  her  shoulder  grow  lighter,  and  that  within 
her  breast  heavier  and  heavier,  as  if  the  burden 
were  shifted,  till  at  last  those  walking  at  her 
side  saw  by  his  white  lips  and  shrinking  visage 
that  the  hand  of  death  had  touched  the  child. 
The  cripple,  between  signs  and  sounds,  made 
them  understand  that  he  desired  baptism  be 
fore  he  died,  and,  tenderly  lifting  him  from  his 
mother's  shoulder,  they  consecrated  him  by  the 
ancient  rites  of  that  church  of  the  poor  and 
martyrs.  So  he  died ;  and  the  mother  mixed 
again  with  the  rest,  and  we  know  her  thence 
forth  only  as  part  of  the  sorrow  of  her  people. 

In  fact,  the  history  of  Gnadenhiitten  follows 
with  certainty  few  individual  fortunes ;  but  its 
chroniclers,  who  touch  upon  no  others  in  that 
march,  tell  us  how  every  night,  when  the  foot 
sore  and  failing  train  halted  after  their  long 
day's  journey,  they  built  a  great  fire  in  the 


140  THREE    VILLAGES. 

midst  of  their  camp,  and,  as  around  an  altar, 
raised  their  voices  in  hymns  of  praise  and 
thanksgiving.  It  may  be  that,  at  these  times, 
when  the  echoes  of  the  songs  died  away  in  dis 
tant  solitudes,  the  teacher  who  led  them  sought 
to  give  his  wild  flock  such  ideas  as  they  might 
grasp  of  their  church's  past,  and  recounted  her 
history  to  those  who  were  keeping  unbroken 
here,  in  another  race  and  remote  deserts,  the 
long  succession  of  her  martyrs.  Fancy  may 
have  her  will  as  to  what  strange  images  of 
imperial  Levantine  and  lordly  German  cities, 
of  Byzantium,  of  Vienna,  of  Prague,  and  of 
the  embattled  life  of  those  far-off  lands,  arose 
before  the  wondering  eyes  of  these  children  of 
the  forest,  as  the  story  ran ;  for  not  one  of 
their  kindred  survives  in  any  generation  to  re 
fute  her,  but  all  have  entered  upon  their  in 
heritance. 

On  the  23d  of  August,  1772,  the  pilgrimage 
came  to  an  end,  and  beside  the  Muskingiim  the 
wanderers  kindled  their  great  camp-fire,  and  for 


GNADENHtJTTEN.  141 

the  last  time  gathered  about  it  to  utter  the 
common  gratitude  in  songs  and  prayers.  On 
the  morrow  they  arose  and  began  their  guiltless 
warfare  with  the  wilderness. 

The  good  Moravians  who  had  led  them  hither 
had  no  grand  or  novel  ideas  of  a  state,  and 
perhaps  their  success  in  civilizing  the  Indians 
was  largely  due  to  the  fact  that  they  formed 
for  them  no  high  civic  ideal,  but  seem  to  have 
made  them  as  like  German  peasant-folk  as  they 
could  where  neither  Kaisers  devoured  them  in 
wars  nor  lords  in  peace,  and  where  the  intermit 
tent  persecutions  of  their  white  and  red  brethren 
could  have  but  poorly  represented  the  continual 
oppressions  of  Fatherland.  They  taught  their 
communities  to  sow  and  reap,  they  instructed 
them  in  humble  and  useful  trades ;  they  incul 
cated  the  simple  policy  of  thrift,  the  humble 
virtues  of  meekness  and  obedience.  But  if  the 
political  ideal  of  the  Moravians  was  lowly,  their 
religious  ideal  and  their  discipline  was  lofty  and 
severe,  —  so  severe,  indeed,  that  it  had  in  time 


142  THREE    VILLAGES. 

of  great  peril  and  necessity  barred  their  union 
even  with  the  early  Lutherans.  They  had 
sought  these  lately  savage  men,  not  with  the 
awful  prophets  of  doom,  and  the  sword  of  the 
Lord  sharpened  against  them,  nor  had  they 
come  among  them  as  the  equally  zealous  and 
devoted  Jesuits  did,  to  take  their  imaginations 
with  the  picturesque  splendors  of  ritual.  The 
ardent  faith  of  the  Hussites  and  the  meek 
goodness  of  Herrnhut  were  the  arms  with  which 
they  surprised  these  wild,  wily  hearts,  and  con 
quered  them  for  heaven,  making  their  converts 
lay  down  the  savage,  not  in  creed  only,  but  in 
life  also,  and  put  on  the  Christian  with  all  the 
hard  conditions  of  forgiveness  to  enemies,  of 
peace,  and  of  continual  labor.  Never  since 
Eliot  preached  to  the  Indians  in  New  England 
had  efforts  so  sincere  and  so  fortunate  been 
made  for  their  conversion,  and  never  had  civil 
ization  been  so  strictly  united  with  conversion. 
For  once  the  unhappy  race,  whom  romance  has 
caressed,  and  sentiment  has  weakly  compas- 


GNADENHUTTEN.  H3 

sionated,  but  from  whom  our  prudent  justice 
has  always  averted  its  face,  was  here  taken  by 
the  strong  hand  of  love  and  lifted  to  the  white 
man's  level,  and  saved  for  earth  as  well  as  for 
heaven.  It  appears  that  the  converts  yielded 
an  implicit  submission  to  the  advice  and  laws 
of  the  Moravians,  who  assumed  no  superiority 
over  them,  who  married  among  them,  and  who 
shared  equally  with  them  in  their  toils  and 
privations. 

Chief  among  these  teachers  was  the  brave, 
steadfast,  and  pious  David  Zeisberger,  a  learned 
and  diligent  man,  and  an  apostle  of  zeal  and 
love  not  less  than  Eliot's.  He  was  born  in 
Moravia,  but  his  early  life  was  passed  at  Herrn- 
hut,  whither  his  parents  repaired  at  Zinzendorfs 
invitation ;  and  he  was  eighty- seven  years  old 
when  he  died,  in  1808.  Of  these  years  he  had 
spent  sixty-two  in  unceasing  labors  among  the 
Indians,  without  reward  save  such  as  came  to 
him  through  the  sense  of  good  work  well  done  ; 
for  he  always  refused  to  "  become  a  hireling," 


144  THREE    VILLAGES. 

and  never  took  pay  for  his  missionary  services. 
He  was  the  author  of  a  German  and  of  an 
English  grammar  of  the  Onondaga  language, 
and  a  dictionary  in  that  tongue  containing  near 
two  thousand  pages,  as  well  as  a  Delaware 
grammar  and  spelling-book  ;  he  was  translator  of 
innumerable  hymns  and  sermons  for  the  use  of 
the  Indian  congregations ;  and  he  was  well 
versed  in  different  native  dialects.  He  was  a 
man  of  simple  and  abstemious  life,  of  a  most 
benevolent*  heart,  and  a  courageous  and  un 
daunted  temper.  We  need  not  refuse  to  know 
that  "  he  was  of  small  stature,  with  a  cheerful 
countenance,"  that  "  his  words  were  few,  and 
never  known  to  be  wasted  at  random  or  in  an 
unprofitable  manner."  1 

1  The  life  and  labors  of  so  good  and  useful  a  man  as  this 
should  not  be  suffered  to  fall  into  forgetfulness,  and  the  reader 
will  be  glad  to  know  that  the  Rev.  Edmund  de  Schweinitz,  a 
distinguished  minister  of  the  United  Brethren  at  Bethlehem, 
formerly  editor  of  The  Moravian  newspaper,  and  now  President 
of  the  Moravian  Theological  Seminary,  has  written  a  very  com 
plete  biography  of  Zeisbsrger.  This  work,  which  is  the  fruit  of 


GNADENHUTTEN.  145 

The  Rev.  John  Heckewelder,  who  imparts 
these  facts,  was  himself  only  second  to  Zeis- 
berger  in  the  length  and  ardor  of  his  labors 
among  the  Indians.  He  was  born  of  Moravian 
parents  in  England,  but  came  to  this  country 
when  a  young  man,  and  spent  nearly  his  whole 
life  in  the  companionship  of  Zeisberger,  and  in 
the  work  which  engaged  him.  He  left  a  daugh 
ter,  born  in  one  of  the  Indian  villages  on  the 
Tuscarawas,  who  survived  until  last  September 
at  Bethlehem ;  and  he  bequeathed  to  our  litera 
ture  a  work  on  the  history,  character,  and  cus 
toms  of  some  tribes  of  the  North  American 
Indians,  which  was  received  with  great  favor  and 
great  disgust  by  differing  North  American  Re 
viewers  of  other  days.  I  have  here  availed  myself 
freely  of  his  Narrative,  the  statements  of  which 

many  years'  diligence  and  thorough  research  among  the  records 
of  the  missionaries  and  the  other  archives  of  the  Church,  is  a 
most  important  contribution  to  American  history,  in  a  depart 
ment  hitherto  neglected  by  students,  and  almost  an  unknown 
land  to  the  mere  general  reader.  Mr.  De  Schweinitz's  vol 
umes  contain  a  full  history  of  the  events  sketched  here. 
10 


146  THREE    VILLAGES. 

there  is  no  reason  to  doubt,  whatever  may  be 
thought  of  his  philosophy  of  Indian  life.  He 
and  Zeisberger  arrived  among  the  first  in  the 
Muskingum  country  in  1772,  and  continued 
there  throughout  ten  years  of  its  occupation  by 
the  Christians,  being  later  joined  by  Brothers 
Edwards,  Sensemann,  and  Jungmann,  and 
others. 

The  Christian  Indians  who  appeared  on  the 
banks  of  the  Tuscarawas  in  1772,  and  who  built 
Schonbrunn,  were  two  hundred  and  forty-one  in 
number ;  a  little  later  came  a  congregation  of 
Mohicans,  and  on  the  same  river,  some  miles  to 
the  southward,  founded  the  village  which  gives 
my  history  its  great  tragic  interest,  and  which 
they  named  Tents  of  Grace,  or  Gnadenhutten. 
In  1776  Zeisberger  and  Heckewelder,  at  the 
prayer  of  the  Delaware  chiefs,  laid  out  a  third 
village,  which  they  called  Lichtenau,  near  the 
heathen  town  of  Goschocking,  and  stationed  a 
Missionary  there,  that  the  wives  and  children  of 
these  chiefs  might  hear  the  preaching  of  the 


GNADENPlUTTEN.  1 4  7 

Christian  faith.  All  these  communities  now  pros 
pered  and  grew  in  the  likeness  of  civilization  ex 
ceeding  that  of  any  of  the  border  settlements. 
It  was  yet  ten  years  before  the  first  white  man 
had  fixed  his  place  west  of  the  Ohio  ;  a  few  hun 
ters  held  Kentucky  against  the  Indians  north  of 
the  river,  and  sustained  with  that  region  the 
primitive  relations  of  horse-stealing  and  scalping ; 
in  Virginia,  the  frail  and  lonely  settlements 
creeping  westward  made  friends  with  the  desert 
and  produced  a  population  nearly  as  wild  as  its 
elder  children  and  quite  as  fierce  and  truculent. 
In  the  mean  time  the  old-world  peasant-thrift  and 
industry,  moving  the  quick  and  willing  hands  of 
the  new  Christians,  made  those  shores  of  the 
Muskingum  glad  with  fields  and  gardens.  The 
villages  were  all  regularly  laid  out  and  solidly 
built  upon  nearly  the  same  plan.  The  chapel 
stood  in  the  midst,  and  the  streets,  branching 
away  from  it  to  the  four  quarters,  were  wide  and 
kept  scrupulously  clean,  and  cattle  were  forbid 
den  to  run  at  large  in  the  public  ways.  The 


148  THREE   VILLAGES. 

houses  of  the  people  were  the  log-cabins  com 
mon  to  all  pioneers  in  the  West ;  but  they  were 
built  upon  foundations  of  stone,  and  neatly  con 
structed  within  and  without,  and  their  grounds 
were  prettily  fenced  with  palings.  The  chapels, 
for  their  greater  honor  and  distinction,  were 
built,  not  of  the  ordinary  trunks  of  trees,  but  of 
logs  squared  and  smooth-hewn,  and  they  had 
shingle  roofs,  and  were  surmounted  with  belfries, 
from  which  the  voice  of  evening  and  of  Sabbath 
bells  floated  out  over  the  happy  homes,  and 
took  the  heathenish  heart  of  the  wilderness 
beyond. 

The  people  were  for  the  most  part  farmers, 
but  some  exercised  mechanical  trades.  There 
was  neither  poverty  nor  wealth  in  the  state,  but 
all  lived  in  abundance  upon  the  crops  that  the 
generous  acres  yielded  them,  and  the  increase  of 
their  flocks  and  herds  ;  and  at  a  time  when  none 
but  the  rudest  fare  was  known  to  their  Virginian 
neighbors,  any  of  them  could  set  before  the 
guest  who  asked  their  hospitality  a  meal's 


GNADENHtJTTEN.  1 4  9 

victuals  (as  Heckewelder  quaintly  phrases  it)  of 
good  bread,  meat,  butter,  cheese,  milk,  tea  and 
coffee,  and  chocolate,  with  such  fruits  and  vege 
tables  as  the  season  afforded.  They  dressed 
decorously,  and  not  after  that  heathen  fashion 
which  took  the  fancy  of  the  younger  of  the  white 
settlers ;  the  men  wore  their  hair  like  Christians, 
not  shaving  it  as  the  savages  did,  nor  decorating 
their  heads  and  faces  with  feathers  and  paint  in 
their  vain  manner ;  and  the  women  doubtless 
wore  the  demure  caps  and  linen  fillets,  which  it 
is  said  the  good  Count  Zinzendorf  once  passed  a 
sleepless  night  in  contriving  for  the  Moravian 
sisterhood. 

The  government  of  the  villages  was  akin  in 
form  and  spirit  to  that  of  all  other  Moravian 
communities.  By  an  ancient  usage  of  the 
church  in  Bohemia  and  Moravia,  each  minister 
received  under  his  roof  and  into  his  family  two 
or  three  acolytes  or  assistants,  whom  he  edu 
cated  in  certain  offices  of  piety  and  religion, 
such  as  visiting  the  sick,  catechizing  the  young, 


150  THREE    VILLAGES. 

and  caring  generally  for  the  moral  welfare  of 
the  people.  When  the  church  was  revived  at 
Herrnhut,  the  minister  ceased  to  receive  the 
acolytes  into  his  family;  but  they  still  con 
tinued  a  part  of  the  social  and  religious  gov 
ernment,  and  in  all  the  missions  of  the  Brethren, 
being  chosen  from  among  the  converts,  they 
were  particularly  useful  and  active.  They  were 
of  either  sex,  the  men  being  charged  to  oversee 
the  Brethren,  and  the  women,  who  must  always, 
according  to  the  Discipline,  be  "  respectable, 
prudent,  and  grave  matrons,"  having  particu 
lar  care  for  the  helplessness  of  widows,  and 
the  innocence  of  young  maidens.  They  were 
never  ordained,  but  they  gave  their  right  hands 
to  the  Elders  as  a  pledge  that  they  would  be 
faithful  in  duty.  In  the  Muskingum  towns,  the 
authority  rested  in  a  council  composed  of  these 
acolytes  and  of  the  missionaries,  subject  to  the 
mission-board  at  Bethlehem,1  and  this  council 
enacted  the  laws  under  which  the  people  lived. 

1  Letter  of  the  Rev.  Edmund  de  Schweinitz. 


GNADENHttTTEN.  151 

Heckewelder  gives  the  substance  of  their  laws, 
which  were  eminently  practical  in  most  things, 
and  were  remarkable,  as  will  be  seen,  for  em 
bodying  some  principles  of  legislation  supposed 
to  be  entirely  the  fruit  of  modern  reform. 
These  enactments,  which  were  accepted  by  the 
whole  congregation  at  Schonbrunn,  and  applied 
afterwards  to  all  the  other  towns,  declared  that 
God  only  should  be  worshipped  among  them, 
that  the  Sabbath  should  be  hallowed,  and  that 
parents  should  be  honored,  and  supported  in 
helplessness  and  age.  It  was  made  unlawful 
for  any  convert  to  be  received  without  the 
consent  of  the  teachers ;  and  neither  adulter 
ers,  drunkards,  thieves,  nor  those  that  took  part 
in  the  feasts,  dances,  or  sacrifices  of  the  hea 
then,  were  suffered  to  remain  in  the  Christian 
towns.  The  people  renounced  "  all  juggles,  lies, 
and  deceits  of  Satan,1'  affirmed  their  will  to  obey 
the  teachers  and  acolytes,  and  to  live  peaceably 
together,  and  not  to  be  idle  or  untruthful  in 
anything.  None  should  strike  another;  but  if 


152  THREE    VILLAGES. 

any  were  injured  in  person  or  property,  the 
wrong-doer  should  make  just  atonement.  "  A 
man,"  the  statutes  continue,  "shall  have  but 
one  wife,  love  her,  and  provide  for  her  and  the 
children,"  and  she  shall  be  obedient  to  him, 
take  care  of  the  children,  "and  be  cleanly  in 
all  things."  The  young  were  forbidden  to  marry 
without  their  parents'  permission;  and  no  one 
might  go  on  a  long  hunt  or  journey  without 
first  informing  the  teachers  or  assistants.  All 
persons  were  enjoined  not  to  contract  debts 
with  traders,  and  none  could  receive  goods  to 
sell  for  them  without  leave  of  the  council;  all 
should  contribute  cheerfully  of  labor  and  sub 
stance  to  the  public  work  of  building  school- 
houses  and  churches,  and  other  enterprises  of 
the  community.  There  was  a  law,  also,  forbid 
ding  the  converts  to  use  witchcraft  or  sorcery 
in  hunting,  as  the  heathen  did,  the  Moravians 
esteeming  it  perhaps  wicked,  or  perhaps  only 
a  foolish  and  unbecoming  thing  for  Christians; 
and  among  these  Indians  the  first  prohibitory 


GNA  DENHtJTTEN.  1 5  3 

liquor  law  was  rigorously  enforced.  They  al 
lowed  no  intoxicating  drink  to  be  brought 
within  their  borders ;  and  if  strangers  or  trad 
ers  chanced  to  have  such  drink  with  them,  the 
acolytes  took  it  in  charge,  and  delivered  it  to 
them  only  on  their  departure.  Some  time  after 
the  adoption  of  these  rules,  when  the  Revo 
lutionary  War  broke  out,  and  a  war-party  .sprang 
up  among  the  Delawares,  the  native  assistants, 
of  their  own  motion,  enacted  that  "  no  one  in 
clining  to  go  to  war,  which  is  the  shedding  of 
blood,"  or  that  gave  encouragement  to  theft  and 
murder  by  purchasing  stolen  goods  of  warriors, 
could  remain  among  them. 

Offenders  against  any  of  the  laws  were  first 
admonished,  and,  upon  repeated  offence,  sent 
out  of  the  towns. 

The  reader  must  have  noted  how  little  these 
stern  and  simple  enactments  flattered  any  savage 
instinct.  Under  them,  a  people  fiercely  free  be 
came  meek  and  obedient,  changed  their  wild 
unchastity  and  loose  marital  relations  for  Chris- 


154  THREE    VILLAGES. 

tian  purity  and  wedlock;  left  their  indolence 
for  continual  toil ;  learned  to  forego  revenge, 
and  to  withhold  the  angry  word  and  hand ; 
eschewed  the  delights  and  deliriums  of  drunk 
enness  ;  and,  above  all,  in  a  time  and  country 
where  all  men,  red  and  white  alike,  seemed 
born  to  massacre  and  rapine,  set  their  faces 
steadfastly  against  war,  and  did  no  murder. 
The  success  of  the  good  men  who  effected  this 
change  seems  like  a  poet's  dream,  in  view  of 
what  we  know  of  Indian  life ;  and  it  must 
indeed  have  been  a  potent  bond  of  love  which 
so  united  their  converts  to  them  that  the  order 
of  the  villages  was  only  once  disturbed  from 
within,  and  was  then  restored  by  the  penitent 
return  to  the  church  of  those  who  had  been 
seduced  by  the  heathen.  Doubtless  the  hold 
of  the  Moravians  upon  the  Indians  was  strength 
ened  by  those  ties  of  marriage  and  adoption 
which  they  formed  with  them ;  but,  after  all, 
their  marvellous  triumph  was  due  to  the  fact 
that  their  efforts  were  addressed  to  the  reason 


GNADENHtJTTEN.  1 5  5 

of  the  savages,  and  to  humanity's  inherent  sense 
of  goodness  and  justice.  I  confess  that  this 
alone  interests  me  in  the  history  of  Gnaden- 
hiitten,,  and  lifts  its  event  out  of  the  order  of 
calamities  into  a  tragedy  of  the  saddest  signifi 
cance.  Not  as  Indians,  but  as  men  responding 
faithfully  and  sincerely  to  the  appeals  of  civil 
ization  and  Christianity,  and  reflecting  in  their 
lives  a  far  truer  image  of  either  than  their 
destroyers,  its  people  have  a  claim  to  sympathy 
and  compassionate  remembrance  which  none 
can  deny. 

In  spite  of  many  vexatious  disturbances  from 
the  incessant  border  frays,  the  prosperity  and 
happiness  of  the  Christian  towns  were  so  great 
that  their  fame  spread  throughout  the  whole 
Indian  country,  and  the  heathen  came  from  far 
and  near  to  look  with  their  own  eyes  upon 
the  marvel.  They  lost  their  savage  calm  when 
they  beheld  these  flourishing  villages  peopled 
by  men  of  their  kindred  and  color,  each  dwell 
ing  in  his  own  house  with  his  wife  and  little 


156  THREE    VILLAGES. 

ones  in  peace  and  security,  and  in  such  abun 
dance  as  the  wilderness  never  gave  her  children. 
They  saw  with  amazement  the  spreading  fields, 
and  all  the  evidences  of  thrift  and  comfort  af 
forded  by  flocks  and  herds,  and  the  free  hos 
pitality  which  welcomed  them  as  guests,  and 
feasted  them  as  long  as  they  cared  to  linger ; 
and  though  they  doubtless  regarded  with  grave 
misgiving  those  points  of  the  Moravian  system 
which  required  men  who  would  naturally  have 
been  naked  and  idle  braves  to  clothe  them 
selves  like  white  men,  and  go  unpainted  and 
industriously  about  women's  work  of  tilling  the 
earth,  and  which,  teaching  them  how  to  use 
the  axe  and  saw  and  hammer,  left  them  un 
skilled  in  the  nobler  arts  of  tomahawking  and 
scalping,  yet  they  could  not  deny  that  the  whole 
result  was  exceedingly  comfortable  and  pleasant. 
They  shook  their  heads,  and  murmured  gloomily 
over  the  contrast  their  own  state  presented  to 
that  of  the  Christians ;  and  they  loudly  blamed 
their  chiefs  for  not  listening  to  the  preachers. 


GNADENHUTTEN.  157 

It  was  not  strange  that  the  Moravians  should 
conceive  hopes  of  converting  the  whole  Dela 
ware  nation,  both  from  the  effect  of  their  peo 
ple's  visible  prosperity  upon  the  imagination 
of  the  savages  and  from  more  substantial  facts. 
Converts  were  made  in  such  numbers  that  it 
became  necessary  to  build  new  and  larger 
chapels  at  Schonbrunn  and  Gnadenhiitten ; 
while,  in  a  council  of  the  whole  Delaware 
nation,  it  was  determined  that  the  Christian 
Indians  and  their  teachers  should  enjoy  through 
out  their  country  equal  rights  and  liberties  with 
other  Indians,  and  that,  while  all  should  be  free 
to  listen  to  the  doctrine  of  the  missionaries,  no 
heathen  Indians  should  be  permitted  to  settle 
in  the  neighborhood  of  the  Christian  towns  or 
in  any  wise  disturb  them.  The  Moravians  had 
exacted  a  pledge  of  neutrality  from  the  Del- 
awares  in  the  wars  between  the  whites  and 
Indians;  in  1776,  when  the  war  of  our  Revo 
lution  began,  they  stood  firm  upon  the  mainten 
ance  of  this  pledge ;  and  in  the  national  council 


158  THREE    ULLAGES. 

it  was  determined  to  keep  faith  with  them. 
Schools  for  the  children  were  maintained  in  the 
villages,  and  instruction  was  given  from  ele 
mentary  books  prepared  by  Zeisberger ;  and  the 
religious  activity  of  the  ministers  never  ceased. 

In  the  midst,  however,  of  these  happy  and  suc 
cessful  labors,  the  storm  which  was  gathering  to 
the  eastward  burst  upon  the  whole  country,  and 
at  last  involved  the  Christian  communities  in  ruin. 

There  had  never  been  peace  between  the 
white  settlers  and  the  other  Indian  tribes,  and 
now,  at  the  outbreak  of  hostilities  between  the 
Colonies  and  England,  the  Delaware  borders 
burned  with  warfare,  the  rumor  of  which  beset 
the  timid  Moravian  flocks  with  terror.  In  spite 
of  the  protection  of  the  Delawares,  they  trembled 
at  the  threats  of  the  tribes  that  accused  them  of 
secret  alliance  with  the  Americans ;  and  they 
were  especially  afraid  of  the  Monseys,  —  once 
a  truculent  and  bloodthirsty  people,  but  now 
extinct  as  the  Spartans,  —  and,  alarmed  at  the 
advance  of  a  Monsey  war  party  upon  Schon- 


GNA  DENHtfTTEN.  T  5  9 

brunn,  they  abandoned  that  village  and  fled  to 
Gnadenhiitten,  first  taking  care  to  destroy  their 
beloved  chapel,  lest  it  should  be  desecrated  by 
heathen  powwows  and  dances.  But  the  Mon- 
seys  passed  harmless  by  Schonbrunn,  and  in 
three  days  the  Christians  came  back ;  though 
they  finally  abandoned  the  place,  and  drew 
nearer  the  Delaware  capital  of  Goschocking,  in 
Lichtenau.  Here,  with  the  fugitives  from  Gnad 
enhiitten,  which  had  been  in  like  manner  aban 
doned,  they  enlarged  the  chapel,  and  pushed 
forward  their  work  of  conversion  and  civilization. 
In  time  they  returned  to  the  deserted  villages, 
and  rebuilt  Schonbrunn,  which  had  been  de 
stroyed  ;  but  as  new  dangers  threatened,  and  the 
Delawares  seemed  about  to  swerve  from  their 
neutrality,  even  Lichtenau  was  vacated,  and  the 
united  congregations  founded  a  new  town,  which 
they  called  Salem.  Schonbrunn  and  Gnadenhiit 
ten  were  still  inhabited  ;  and  the  converts  contin 
ued  obedient  to  their  teachers  ;  laboring  as  their 
wont  was,  and  enjoying  seasons  of  prosperity  and 


160  TPIREE    VILLAGES. 

happiness  with  longer  and  longer  intervals  of 
disturbance.  The  war  parties  of  the  Wyan- 
dots  had  free  passage  to  and  from  Virginia 
through  the  Delaware  country,  and  the  pioneers 
made  their  avenging  forays  over  the  same 
ground  ;  the  Christian  villages  were  thus  overrun 
by  warlike  guests,  to  whom  they  dared  not  deny 
their  hospitality,  and  they  came  to  be  regarded 
with  an  evil  eye  by  either  side.  The  pioneers 
especially  complained  that  they  fed  and  com 
forted  the  murderous  bands  that  preyed  upon  the 
borders,  and  desolated  them  with  warfare  as 
pitiless  and  indiscriminate  as  that  waged  by 
themselves,  and  forgot  that  the  Moravians,  claim 
ing  from  the  Indians  a  right  earned  by  their 
hospitality,  saved  from  blows  and  death  the  un 
happy  captives  who  were  carried  through  their 
country,  and  when  it  was  possible  ransomed 
them,  and  sent  them  back  to  their  friends.  -In 
deed,  according  to  the  American  and  Moravian 
annalists  alike,  the  Missionaries  frequently  fore 
warned  the  settlements  of  Indian  forays,  —  not 


GNADENHU  TTEN.  1 6 1 

as  spies  in  our  interest,  but  as  good  men  abhor 
ring  the  cruelties  of  savage  warfare,  and  anxious 
to  avert  its  atrocities  from  helpless  women  and 
children.  The  authorities  on  either  side  recog 
nized  the  vast  advantage  gained  to  the  American 
cause  by  the  neutrality  in  which  they  held  the 
Delawares  and  the  allies  of  that  nation.  At  the 
most  disastrous  period  of  our  Revolution,  this 
neutrality  was  observed  by  a  body  of  ten  thou 
sand  warriors,  whom  the  British  vainly  endeav 
ored  to  incite  against  us,  and  it  was  not  broken  till 
the  great  contest  had  been  virtually  decided  in 
our  favor.  President  Reed  of  Philadelphia,  in  a 
letter  to  Zeisberger,  thanked  "  him  in  the  name 
of  the  whole  country  for  his  services  among  the 
Indians,  particularly  for  his  Christian  humanity 
in  turning  back  so  many  war  parties  on  their 
way  to  rapine  and  massacres ;  "  and  there  is  no 
doubt  of  the  merciful  and  beneficent  attitude 
held  toward  us  by  a  people  afterwards  requited 
with  such  murderous  wrong.  l 

1  Letter  to  the  author  from  Rev.  Edmund  de  Schweinitz. 
II 


1 62  THREE    VILLAGES. 

It  had  been  the  custom  of  some  of  the  settlers 
to  steal  the  horses  of  the  Brethren,  and  the  en 
tire  population  of  the  border  seems  to  have 
inherited  that  stupid  hatred  which  everywhere 
attended  the  enterprises  of"  the  Moravians. 
Sometimes  large  bodies  of  pioneers,  bent  upon 
errands  of  theft  and  murder  among  the  hostile 
Indians,  would  pass  through  the  Christian  coun 
try.  Such  a  body  once  halted  at  Salem  and 
asked  provision ;  and  then,  while  the  greater 
part  remained  with  their  commandant,  who  was 
conversing  with  Heckewelder  and  assuring  him 
of  his  respect  for  the  Brethren,  and  his  confi 
dence  in  their  neutrality,  certain  of  the  men 
stole  away  to  destroy  the  other  villages,  and 
could  scarcely  be  restrained  from  that  purpose 
by  their  leader,  to  whom  knowledge  of  it  was 
happily  brought  in  time. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  war  parties  of  the 
Wyandots  grew  more  and  more  insolent  and  ex 
acting.  They  appeared  in  larger  numbers  and 
with  greater  appetites,  and  the  hospitality  offered 


GNA  DENflOTTEN,  1 6  3 

them  came  to  be  a  very  oppressive  tribute, 
which  they  occasionally  acknowledged  by  threat 
ening  the  lives  of  the  teachers,  whom  they  had 
often  plotted  to  carry  off  to  the  English  com 
mandant  at  Detroit. 

During  the  long  summer  months  the  Christian 
territory  was  infested  by  these  unwelcome  guests. 
It  was  a  grateful  relief,  therefore,  that  the  winter 
brought  the  teachers  and  elders,  when  the  last 
party  of  warriors,  in  their  paint  and  savage 
panoply,  marched  down  the  peaceful  streets, 
chanting  their  melancholy  farewell  song,  and 
doubtless  taking  some  hearts  among  their  civil 
ized  kindred ;  for  here  and  there  a  young  girl 
must  have  melted  to  look  on  their  splendor,  here 
and  there  a  boy's  heart  leaped  with  delight  in 
those  free  wild  men ;  and  even  in  some  of  the 
Brethren  tempting  memories  of  other  days, 
when  they,  too,  had  trodden  the  war-path,  may 
have  been  stirred  by  these  sylvan  notes.  But 
the  wives  and  mothers  all  rejoiced  with  the  Mo 
ravians,  when  the  distance  hid  the  nodding 


1 64  THREE   VILLAGES. 

plumes,  and  the  last  echo  let  the  farewell  song 
die.  A  profound  peace  fell  upon  the  solitudes 
with  the  falling  snow ;  for  even  if  the  woods  had 
not  now  become  impassable  to  the  warriors,  the 
drifts  would  have  betrayed  their  steps  beyond 
hope  of  concealment,  and  pursuit  and  vengeance 
would  have  too  surely  attended  any  raid  upon 
the  white  settlements.  And  now,  life  in  the 
Muskingum  villages  lapsed  into  a  tranquillity 
broken  only  by  the  advent  from  the  forest  of 
some  poor  heathen,  on  whom  the  words  of  the 
ministers  had  wrought,  and  who  came  at  last, 
with  prayers  and  tears,  entreating  to  be  received 
into  the  brotherhood  of  the  Christians.  It  was 
the  season  of  social  enjoyment,  and  the  people, 
released  from  the  labor  of  their  farms,  paid 
friendly  visits  between  village  and  village,  and 
from  house  to  house,  or  all  met  in  their  chapels 
to  celebrate  those  Love-Feasts,  by  which  their 
church  remembered  the  earliest  Christians,  — 
eating  and  drinking  together,  and  joining  in  wor 
ship.  It  was  also  the  time  of  in-doors  industry ; 


GNADENHVTTEN.  1 6  5 

the  loom  clattered  at  the  window,  and  the  wheel 
murmured  beside  the  hearth  much  the  same 
music  that  the  children  made  over  Father  Zeis- 
berger's  spelling-books  in  the  well-ordered  schools. 
No  sound  but  that  of  the  chapel  bell  broke  upon 
these  homely  harmonies,  save  when  some  peace 
ful  soul  departed  to  its  inheritance,  and  the  peo 
ple,  according  to  the  Moravian  fashion,  hailed 
its  release  from  earthly  tribulations  with  the  jubi 
lant  sound  of  horns  and  clarionets,  continuing 
their  solemn  exultation  while  the  bearers  of  the 
dead  carried  their  burden  through  the  street  to 
the  house  where  it  was  prepared  for  burial.  The 
winter  was  the  great  harvest  of  the  missionaries, 
and  they  wrought  zealously  in  their  pious  work, 
animating  those  who  had  grown  cold,  and  call 
ing  the  unconverted  to  repentance.  The  churches 
grew  in  numbers  and  activity ;  and  it  must  have 
been  with  something  like  a  pang  that  the 
Moravians  and  their  assistants  saw  the  buds  be 
ginning  to  swell  upon  the  naked  boughs,  and 
found  the  first  violet  in  the  woods. 


1 66  •    THREE    VILLAGES. 

All  was  changed  with  the  return  of  spring, 
and  with  the  renewal  of  every  year  the  dangers 
of  their  people  increased. 

Most  of  the  allies  of  the  Delawares  had  at  last 
joined  in  the  war  against  the  Americans,  and 
there  had  grown  up  among  the  Delawares  them 
selves  a  hostile  faction,  which  constantly  in 
creased.  The  leaders  of  this  party  perceived 
that  nothing  but  the  presence  of  the  Christian 
Indians  hindered  them  from  dragging  the  whole 
nation  into  the  war,  and  all  their  efforts  were 
bent  to  their  removal.  The  commandant  of  the 
Americans  at  Pittsburg  was  also  perfectly  sensi 
ble  of  this  fact.  He  seems  to  have  been  one  of 
those  humane,  enlightened,  and  faithful  soldiers 
who  have  been  only  too  rarely  intrusted  with  the 
control  of  our  Indian  relations,  and  the  Dela 
wares  held  him  in  the  greatest  love  and  honor. 
When  they  applied  to  him  for  advice,  he  coun 
selled  them  to  treat  the  wards  of  their  nation 
with  favor  and  kindness ;  and  we  may  well 
believe,  from  the  report  of  the  missionaries,  and 


G  NA  DENHtfTTEN.  1 6  7 

from  concurrent  facts,  that  something  better 
than  mere  policy  prompted  this  advice.  But 
his  friendship  in  the  end  furnished  the  war  Dela- 
wares  with  an  accusation  against  the  Moravians, 
and  determined  the  English  commandant  before 
whom  it  was  made  to  remove  the  Christians 
from  the  Muskingum.  The  letters  from  Pitts- 
burg  to  the  nation  were  craftily  carried  to  the 
missionaries  to  be  read  and  answered.  They 
could  not  refuse  this  service,  but  they  rendered 
it  sorely  against  their  will,  for  they  feared  that  it 
would  bring  upon  them  the  charge  of  alliance 
with  the  Americans  and  unfaithfulness  to  their 
neutrality,  as  indeed  finally  happened.  When 
the  missionaries  confronted  their  chief  accuser 
before  the  English  commandant,  the  savage  with 
deep  grief  and  shame  owned  his  fraud  and 
declared  them  wholly  innocent ;  but  in  the 
mean  time  the  ruin  of  the  villages  had  been 
compassed. 

All  the  events  leading  to  the  final  disaster  are 
pathetic    enough    in    themselves,    and    fantastic 


1 68  THREE    VILLAGES. 

enough  in  their  travesty  of  the  fatalities  by  which 
greater  states  have  fallen.  A  little  wicked  diplo 
macy,  a  great  deal  of  ineffectual  persuasion,  ap 
peals  to  the  common  sense  of  danger  answered 
by  a  few  weak  souls,  and  a  coup  de  main  at 
last  accomplished  the  purposes  of  the  Indians 
against  the  Brethren.  The  war  faction  amongst 
the  Delawares  had  already  fruitlessly  urged  the 
Moravians  to  remove  to  the  Miami  country, 
when,  on  the  loth  of  August,  1781,  a  chieftain 
of  the  Hurons  called  the  Half- King  appeared 
in  Salem  at  the  head  of  a  hundred  and  forty 
armed  men,  flying  the  Cross  of  St.  George,  and 
accompanied  by  Captain  Elliott  and  a  trader 
named  McCormick.  It  does  not  appear  certain 
that  these  Englishmen  were  regularly  in  the 
king's  service,  but  on  this  occasion  they  gave 
his  authority  to  the  whole  transaction,  and  the 
Half- King  and  his  warriors  acted  under  the 
direction  of  Elliott,  who  was  deputed  to  this 
service  by  the  governor  of  Detroit.  They 
marched  down  the  startled  village  street,  and, 


GNADENHUTTEN.  1 6  9 

after  a  halt  on  the  borders  of  the  place,  passed 
on  to  Gnadenhiitten,  where  their  number  was 
increased  to  three  hundred  by  the  arrival  of 
Monseys  and  war  Delawares.  A  week  of  riot 
and  debauchery  in  the  heathen  camp  celebrated 
these  preliminary  steps,  but  no  acts  of  violence 
were  committed  against  the  Brethren ;  and,  as 
soon  as  his  followers  had  recovered  from  their 
drunken  stupor,  the  Half- King,  in  full  council, 
urged  the  converts  to  abandon  a  place  where 
they  were  in  continual  peril  from  the  Virginians, 
and  to  place  themselves  under  the  protection  of 
the  British  at  Sandusky.  Being  answered  by  the 
assistants  that  they  were  at  peace  with  all  men, 
and  had  no  fear  of  the  Virginians,  and  that, 
moreover,  they  were  too  heavy  with  substance 
to  think  of  leaving  their  present  homes,  and 
must  in  any  case  delay  giving  a  final  answer  till 
spring,  the  Half- King  and  his  men  declared 
themselves  satisfied,  and,  as  a  clear  expression 
of  their  minds,  fired  upon  the  British  colors. 
Loskiel  and  Heckewelder  dwell  with  sad  unction 


170  THREE    VILLAGES. 

upon  the  events  which  we  need  only  allude  to, 
telling  us  with  much  circumstance  how  Elliott 
now  turned  to  evil  account  the  departure  of  two 
of  the  Brethren  to  Pittsburg,  whither  they  went 
to  inform  the  commandant  of  their  affairs,  and 
to  beg  that  he  would  not  interfere,  lest  he  should 
thereby  confirm  the  Indians  in  their  suspicions ; 
how  the  warriors,  incensed  by  Elliott's  report 
that  the  Virginians  were  marching  to  the  rescue 
of  the  Brethren,  shot  down  their  cattle  and 
threatened  their  teachers ;  how  the  savage  pol 
iticians  tampered  with  the  weaker  converts, 
alluring  them  with  pleasant  pictures  of  the  San- 
dusky  country,  and  terrifying  them  with  the 
fate  that  awaited  them  if  they  remained  on  the 
Muskingum ;  and  how  about  one  tenth  of  the 
Christians  were  brought  to  favor  removal,  and 
some  were  unhappy  enough  to  give  the  hint 
upon  which  the  savages  afterwards  acted,  saying, 
"  We  look  to  our  teachers ;  what  they  do,  we 
likewise  will  do  ! " 

By   this    time    all   the    villages    were    in    the 


GNA DENIlOTTEN.  I  7 1 

utmost  confusion ;  and  at  Gnadenhlitten  the 
women  and  children  were  in  terror  of  their 
lives;  many  of  the  houses  were  sacked,  and 
the  cattle  which  had  been  shot  down  in  the 
streets  and  fields  sent  up  an  intolerable  stench. 
Well  might  Zeisberger  write  to  Heckewelder : 
"  It  has  the  appearance  as  if  Satan  is  again 
about  to  make  himself  merry  by  troubling  and 
persecuting  us.  No  wonder  he  grows  angry 
when  he  sees  how  many  of  his  subjects  he  loses 
by  our  preaching  the  gospel.  His  roaring,  how 
ever,  must  not  frighten  us ;  we  have  a  heavenly 
Father,  without  whose  will  he  dare  not  touch  us.r 
Let  us  rely  on  Him  who  so  often  has  delivered 
us  from  his  machinations."  In  the  midst  of 
these  sorrows  and  troubles  this  good  man 
meekly  gathered  his  flock  about  him  at  Gnad- 
enhiitten,  and  preached  to  them  for  the  last 
time  in  the  beloved  chapel,  while  enemies  com 
passed  them  about ;  giving  "  a  most  emphatic 
discourse,"  says  Heckewelder,  "  on  the  great 
love  of  God  to  man,"  and  charging  them  in  no 


172  THREE    VILLAGES. 

event  to  place  themselves  "  on  a  level  with  the 
heathen  by  making  use  of  weapons  ""  for  their 
defence. 

Soon  after,  the  heathen,  having  received  a  repe 
tition  of  the  answer  originally  made  them  by  the 
Christians,  when  they  urged  the  removal  of  the 
latter,  resolved  to  seize  upon  the  missionaries, 
and  compel  their  followers  to  abandon  the 
Muskingum  country.  Their  capture  was  easily 
effected,  for  they  made  no  effort  to  escape,  and 
the  fears  of  the  savages  that  the  Brethren  would 
attempt  their  rescue  were  idle.  They  patiently 
submitted  to  the  outrage  and  insult  offered  them 
by  the  Monseys  into  whose  hands  they  fell,  and 
who,  having  stripped  them  of  nearly  all  their 
clothing,  carried  them  prisoners  before  Captain 
Elliott.  The  Englishman,  who  seems  to  have 
undertaken  the  expedition  chiefly  through  a  de 
sire  to  profit  by  the  distress  and  necessities  of 
the  Brethren,  and  who  was  particularly  bent 
upon  buying  their  cattle  for  a  trifling  sum  to  sell 
again  at  a  great  price  in  Detroit,  had  the  grace 


GNADENHUTTEN.  1 7  3 

to  express  some  shame  when  these  harmless 
men  were  brought  maltreated  and  almost  naked 
into  his  presence ;  but  he  did  nothing  to  relieve 
them ;  indeed,  he  speculated  in  the  clothing  of 
which  the  savages  had  plundered  their  houses, 
and  they  were  kept  from  bodily  suffering  only 
by  the  compassion  of  some  of  the  heathen,  who 
gave  back  part  of  their  stolen  gear,  and  the 
Brethren  who  brought  them  blankets.  Their 
calamity  was  not  the  less  real  because  it  took 
at  this  and  other  times  the  face  of  comedy. 
Heckewelder's  coat,  restored  to  him  without  the 
skirts,  and  worn  in  that  amusing  state  of  mutila 
tion,  covered  an  aching  heart,  and  the  fortune 
that  similarly  made  a  jest  of  his  associates,  not 
the  less  afflicted  them  with  anguish  for  the 
wreck  of  their  just  and  good  hopes,  for  the  un- 
happiness  of  their  people,  and  for  the  cruel  state 
of  their  families  :  for  their  wives  and  children 
had  likewise  been  seized  by  the  heathen,  and 
Sister  Sensemann  was  driven  from  one  village  to 
another,  with  her  babe  four  days  old  in  her 


174  THREE    VILLAGES. 

arms.  As  to  their  treatment  by  the  warriors,  in 
whose  camp  they  were  confined,  "  What  incom 
moded  us  most,"  says  Heckewelder,  with  a 
quaint  pathos,  "was  their  custom  of  repeating 
the  scalp  yell  so  often  for  each  of  their  prisoners 
during  the  night,  as  well  as  in  the  daytime ;  but 
this  is  a  general  custom  with  them,  and  is  con 
tinued  until  the  prisoner  is  liberated  or  killed. 
Another  very  incommoding  custom  they  have  is 
that  of  performing  their  war  dances  and  songs 
during  the  night  near  their  prisoners,  —  all  which 
we  had  to  endure,  exclusive  of  being  thereby 
prevented  from  enjoying  sleep.  Otherwise  the 
addresses  paid  us  by  a  jovial  and  probably  harm 
less  Ottawa  Indian,  who,  having  obtained  of  the 
Wyandot  warriors  sufficient  of  our  clothes  to 
dress  himself  as  a  white  man,  and  placing  a 
white  nightcap  on  his  head,  being  mounted  on 
a  horse,  would  ride  through  the  camps,  nodding 
to  us  each  time  he  passed,  caused  much  amuse 
ment  through  the  camp,  and  in  some  measure 
to  us  also."  The  men  to  whom  this  moderate 


GNA  DENllUTTEN.  I  7  5 

diversion  was  offered  had  already  been  enter 
tained  by  threats  against  their  lives,  and  were  at 
the  moment  of  the  Ottawa's  pleasantries  perhaps 
sufficiently  amused  in  guessing  what  fate  was 
reserved  for  them.  They  were  very  glad  to  be 
released  at  last  on  their  promise  (exacted  by 
Elliott's  command)  that  they  would  no  longer 
resist  the  will  of  their  captors,  but  would  prepare 
at  once  to  go  with  them  to  Sandusky.  It  was 
hard  to  persuade  the  Brethren  that  they  were 
indeed  to  abandon  their  homes  ;  and  the  mis 
sionaries  had  to  call  them,  not  only  from  the 
labors  of  the  field,  but  from  their  efforts  to  re 
pair  the  damages  done  by  the  warriors  to  their 
gardens  and  houses ;  and  of  one  it  is  related 
that  he  was  summoned  to  the  general  meeting  at 
Salem,  away  from  the  new  cottage  on  which  he 
had  just  put  the  last  touches  of  loving  industry. 
But  they  all  obeyed  the  appeals  of  their  teachers, 
and  on  the  gih  of  September  assembled  from 
Gnadenhtitten  and  Schonbrunn  at  Salem,  where 
for  the  last  time  the  three  congregations  met 


I  76  THREE    VILLAGES. 

together  in  worship.  "A  most  extraordinary 
sensation  of  the  presence  of  the  Lord  comforted 
their  hearts,"  says  Heckewelder;  the  gospel 
was  preached,  the  holy  sacrament  was  admin 
istered  to  the  communicants,  and,  even  in  this 
hour  of  earthly  extremity,  a  convert  was  bap 
tized. 

The  Christians  were  in  the  mean  time  guarded 
by  a  body  of  the  hostile  Delawares.  Many  of 
these  attended  the  service,  which  was  in  their 
tongue,  and  all  treated  the  congregations  with 
perfect  decorum  and  respect ;  but  on  the  next 
day  the  Half- King  and  his  followers  arrived, 
and  renewed  at  Salem  the  scenes  of  rapine  and 
devastation  already  enacted  at  Schonbrunn  and 
Gnadenhiitten.  Then  the  teachers  besought 
their  captors  to  delay  no  longer,  and  on  the 
third  day,  which  was  the  nth  of  September, 
the  Brethren  turned  their  faces  from  the  valley 
of  the  Muskingum. 

"  Never,"  says  Hecke welder,  "  did  the  Chris 
tian  Indians  leave  a  country  with  more  re- 


GNADENHVTTEN.  1 7  7 

gret ; "  and  he  and  his  brother  annalists, 
Holmes  and  Loskiel,  briefly  relate  the  losses 
the  Brethren  underwent,  most  of  all  lamenting 
the  destruction  of  the  writings  and  records 
of  the  little  state,  of  the  books  of  instruction 
and  worship  prepared  with  so  much  pains 
and  labor  for  the  converts  and  children,  and 
now  heaped  into  the  streets  and  burned  by  the 
Wyandots,  as  a  century  before  the  Bibles  of 
the  Moravians  were  burnt  by  the  Austrians. 
The  total  loss  of  the  Christians  is  computed 
at  twelve  thousand  dollars,  —  a  great  sum  for 
that  rude  time  and  country  and  that  humble 
people.  The  Wyandots  had  destroyed  six  hun 
dred  head  of  swine  and  cattle,  and  hundreds 
of  young  cattle  had  wandered  into  the  woods. 
The  crops  of  the  last  year  were  left  in  the 
garners  ;  and  three  hundred  acres  of  corn,  ripe 
for  harvest,  nodded  in  the  September  sunshine, 
as  the  captives  looked  their  last  upon  their 
beloved  villages. 

At   Sandusky  the  Brethren   halted   and   pre- 


1 7 8  THREE  'VILLA GES. 

pared  to  pass  the  winter;  while  their  teachers 
were  carried  on  to  Detroit,  where  they  con 
fronted  their  accusers  before  the  English  gov 
ernor,  and  were  honorably  acquitted.  The 
season  was  very  cold,  and  the  miserable  peo 
ple,  assembled  on  the  bleak  Sandusky  shores 
without  proper  food  and  shelter,  suffered  greatly, 
and  many  little  children  died  of  cold  and  fam 
ine  ;  but  our  story  follows  the  fate  only  of  those 
who  from  time  to  time  stole  back  to  the  Mus- 
kingum,  and  gathered  the  corn  yet  standing 
in  the  fields  for  the  rescue  of  the  starving 
Brethren. 

In  March,  1782,  a  larger  party  than  usual 
arrived  at  the  deserted  villages  and  began  their 
belated  harvest.  Great  number  of  these  were 
women  and  children,  and  the  men  bore  only 
such  arms  as  served  them  in  hunting.  Even  if 
their  bloodless  creed  had  permitted  them  to 
guard  against  the  attacks  of  enemies,  they  would 
not  have  prepared  to  defend  themselves  in  a 
region  now  abandoned  by  hostile  Indians,  and 


GXA  DENHttTTEN.  i  7  9 

lying  near  the  settlements  of  the  whites  whom 
they  had  so  often  befriended ;  for  it  was  the 
firm  belief  of  these  ill-starred  people  that  they 
had  only  to  fear  savages  of  their  own  race,  and 
that  they  were  all  the  safer  for  their  proximity 
to  the  Americans.  They  worked  eagerly  and 
diligently,  gathering  the  corn,  and  securing  it 
in  sacks  for  removal  to  Sandusky,  and  it  would 
scarcely  have  alarmed  them  to  know  that  Vir 
ginian  spies  had  noted  their  presence  and  re 
ported  it  in  the  settlements. 

But  on  the  border  deadly  influences  were 
operating  against  them.  In  February,  a  party 
of  Indians  from  Sandusky  had  fallen  upon  a 
lonely  cabin,  and  had  murdered  all  its  inmates, 
with  facts  of  peculiar  atrocity.  Earlier  in  the 
winter,  a  number  of  the  Christians  had  been 
taken,  while  gathering  corn  on  the  Muskingum, 
and  sent  to  Fort  Pitt,  where  they  were  promptly 
liberated  by  the  commandant.  It  was  the  pub 
lic  sentiment  of  the  border,  that  these  captives 
ought  to  have  been  killed,  religiously  as  Canaan- 


l8o  THREE    VILLAGES. 

ites  and  politically  as  Indians ;  and  there  was  a 
very  bitter  feeling  against  their  liberator,  ex 
tending  to  Colonel  Williamson,  who  had  taken 
the  prisoners  and  might  have  butchered  them 
on  the  spot,  instead  of  sending  them  to  Fort 
Pitt.  Williamson  had  been  the  most  popular 
man  in  the  backwoods,  and  he  was  deeply 
hurt  by  the  reproach  his  clemency  had  brought 
upon  him.  He  was,  according  to  the  testimony 
of  the  annalist 1  who  most  severely  condemns  the 
Gnadenhiitten  massacre,  "  a  brave  man,  but  not 
cruel.  He  would  meet  an  enemy  in  battle,  and 
fight  like  a  soldier,  but  not  murder  a  prisoner." 
Out  of  these  evil  elements  —  bigotry,  lust  of 
vengeance,  and  a  generous  but  weak  man's 
shame  —  was  shaped  the  calamity  of  the  Chris 
tian  Indians.  As  soon  as  it  was  noised  through 

1  Notes  on  the  Settlement  and  Indian  Wars  of  the  Western 
Parts  of  Virginia  and  Pennsylvania,  from  the  Year  1763  to  1783 
inclusive,  together  with  a  View  of  the  State  of  Society  and 
Manners  of  the  First  Settlers  of  the  Western  Country.  By  the 
Rev.  Dr.  Jos.  Doddridge,  Wellsburg,  Va.  Printed  at  the 
office  of  the  Gazette,  for  the  Author.  1824. 


GNADENHUTTEN.  181 

the  settlements  of  Western  Virginia  and  Penn 
sylvania  that  a  large  body  of  the  converts  had 
returned  to  the  Muskingum,  a  band  of  a  hun 
dred  and  sixty  pioneers  hastily  assembled,  and, 
under  the  lead  of  Colonel  Williamson,  who 
burned  to  wipe  out  the  stain  of  his  former  pity, 
advanced  upon  the  deserted  villages  with  the 
avowed  purpose  of  putting  the  Indians  to  death. 
We  must  record,  upon  the  unquestionable  au 
thority  given  below,  that  these  murderers  were 
not  vagabonds  or  miscreants,  but  in  many  cases 
people  of  the  first  social  rank  in  the  settlements ; 
and  perhaps  we  ought  to  respect  them  as  vigor 
ous  and  original  thinkers,  whose  ideas  of  an 
Indian  policy  still  largely  inspire  us. 

They  hastily  organized,  and  then  pushed  for 
ward  with  an  eagerness  in  their  purpose  which 
defied  all  attempts  at  order  and  discipline,  if  any 
were  made.  Their  advance  was  not  that  of  a 
military  expedition,  but  consciously  and  evi 
dently  that  of  a  band  of  robbers  and  cut-throats, 
descending  upon  victims  from  whom  they  ex- 


I2  THREE    VILLAGES. 

pected  no  resistance.  And  throughout  the 
whole  transaction,  as  if  their  deed  were  to  have 
the  lustre  of  no  virtue,  they  behaved  with  infa 
mous  cowardice  as  well  as  treachery. 

It  is  pitiful  to  think  of  the  blind  trust  and 
security  in  which  their  victims  awaited  them. 
The  commandant  at  Fort  Pitt,  hearing  of  the 
expedition  and  its  object,  sent  a  messenger  to 
warn  the  Christians  of  their  peril,  but  he  unhap 
pily  arrived  too  late.  Yet  they  were  not  wholly 
taken  unawares.  Information  of  the  approach 
of  Williamson's  men  had  reached  them  through 
another  channel;  but  they  quietly  continued 
their  labors,  unable  to  believe  that  any  harm 
was  meant  them ;  and  the  murderers  found 
them  in  the  fields  at  work. 

In  fact,  they  had  almost  completed  their  har 
vest,  and  they  were  preparing  for  an  early  de 
parture  when  the  whites  appeared  in  their  midst 
at  Gnadenhiitten.  The  first  innocent  life  had 
been  taken,  and  the  hands  extended  in  friend 
ship  to  the  Brethren  were  already  stained  with 


GNA  DENHUTTEN.  1 8  3 

the  blood  of  one  of  their  number.  About  a  mile 
from  the  village  the  whites  found  a  half-breed 
boy,  the  son  of  the  missionary  Schebosch  and 
his  Indian  wife,  and,  giving  him  a  peaceful 
greeting,  they  approached  and  killed  him  with 
their  tomahawks,  he  crying  out  between  their 
blows  that  his  father  was  a  white  man,  and  im 
ploring  them  to  spare  him.  To  the  main  body 
of  the  Christians  whom  they  found  in  the  corn 
fields  they  now  declared  that  they  had  come  to 
remove  them  to  Fort  Pitt,  where  they  would  be 
safe  from  dangers  that  menaced  them  as  the 
friends  of  the  Americans,  at  the  same  time  tak 
ing  care  to  secure  their  rifles,  lest  in  their  ex 
tremity  these  helpless  people  should  be  tempted 
to  make  some  effort  at  self-defence.  The 
Brethren  thanked  them  for  their  kindness,  and 
mingled  freely  with  their  captors,  who  walked 
about  among  them,  "  engaging  them  in  friendly 
conversation,"  asking  them  concerning  their  civil 
and  religious  customs,  and  praising  them  for 
their  practical  Christianity.  They  persuaded 


1 84  THREE    VILLAGES. 

them  to  send  messengers  with  a  detachment 
ordered  to  Salem,  and  urge  the  Brethren  in  the 
fields  there  to  repair  to  Gnadenhiitten.  In  the 
mean  time,  the  whites  remaining  suddenly  fell 
upon  their  bewildered  prisoners  and  bound 
them ;  and  the  expedition,  acting  upon  precon 
certed  measures,  re-entered  Gnadenhiitten  with 
the  Salem  converts  disarmed  and  manacled. 

Although  the  purpose  of  the  campaign  had 
been  perfectly  understood  from  the  beginning, 
the  officers  were  now  loath  to  execute  it  upon 
their  own  responsibility :  and  it  is  Doddridge's 
belief,  from  his  personal  knowledge  of  William 
son's  character,  that  if  he  had  been  an  officer 
with  due  authority,  and  not  merely  the  leader  of 
a  band  of  marauders,  he  would  not  have  suffered 
any  of  his  prisoners  to  be  slain.  But  he  was 
powerless,  and  could  only  refer  their  fate  to  a 
vote  of  his  men.  When,  therefore,  it  was  de 
manded,  Should  the  Christian  Indians  be  put  io 
death,  or  should  they  be  sent  to  Fort  Pitt  ?  only 
eighteen  voted  to  spare  their  lives.  It  still  re- 


G  NA  DENHU  TTEN.  1 8  5 

mained  a  question  whether  they  should  be 
burned  alive,  or  tomahawked  and  scalped ;  and 
the  majority  having  voted  for  the  latter  form  of 
murder,  one  of  the  assassins  was  deputed  to 
inform  the  Indians,  that,  inasmuch  as  they  were 
Christians,  they  would  be  given  one  night  to 
prepare  for  death  in  a  Christian  manner. 

It  is  related  that  the  merciful  eighteen  reiter 
ated  their  protests  to  the  last  against  the  atro 
city,  but  neither  their  protests  nor  the  appeals  of 
the  Indians  availed.  One  of  the  women  who 
had  been  educated  at  Bethlehem,  and  who 
spoke  good  English,  fell  upon  her  knees  at 
Williamson's  feet,  and  besought  his  protection ; 
but  the  greater  number  of  the  victims  seem  to 
have  submitted  silently,  with  something  of  the 
old  stoical  fortitude  of  the  savage,  and  some 
thing  of  the  martyr's  serene  resignation.  They 
embraced  with  tears  and  kisses,  and  asked  for 
giveness  one  of  another,  and  thus  meekly  pre 
pared  themselves  for  their  doom.  They  were 
Christians  whose  lives  had  witnessed  to  the  sin- 


1 86  THREE    VILLAGES. 

cerity  of  their  conversion;  and,  now  brought 
face  to  face  with  death,  their  faith  remained 
unshaken.  Among  them  were  five  of  the  na 
tional  assistants,  one  of  whom  was  well  educated 
in  English,  and  all  of  whom  were  men  of  exem 
plary  thought  and  deed.  These  led  the  rest  in 
the  fervent  prayers  and  hymns  with  which  they 
wore  away  the  night. 

At  dawn  the  assassins  grew  impatient  of  the 
delay  they  had  granted,  and  sent  to  the  Breth 
ren,  demanding  whether  they  were  not  yet  ready 
to  die  ;  and,  being  answered  that  they  had  com 
mended  their  souls  to  God  and  received  the 
assurance  of  His  peace,  the  whites  parted  them, 
the  men  from  the  women  and  children,  and 
placed  them  in  two  houses,  to  which,  from  some 
impulse  of  grotesque  and  ferocious  drollery,  they 
gave  the  name  of  the  Slaughter-Houses. 

Few  even  among  those  who  had  voted  for  the 
murder  of  the  Brethren  took  part  in  the  actual 
butchery.  The  great  body  of  the  whites  turned 
aside  from  the  ineffable  atrocity,  while  those 


GNA  DENHtJTTEN.  1 8  7 

who  with  their  own  hands  did  the  murder  now 
entered  the  cabins. 

The  house  in  which  the  men  were  confined 
had  been  that  of  a  cooper,  and  his  mallet,  aban 
doned  in  the  removal  of  the  preceding  autumn, 
lay  upon  the  floor.  One  of  the  whites  picked  it 
up,  and  saying  "  How  exactly  this  will  answer  for 
the  business  !  "  made  his  way  among  the  kneel 
ing  figures  toward  Brother  Abraham,  a  convert, 
who,  from  being  somewhat  lukewarm  in  the 
faith,  had  in  this  extremity  become  the  most 
fervent  in  exhortation.  Then,  while  the  clear 
and  awful  music  of  the  victims'  prayers  and 
songs  arose,  this  nameless  murderer  lifted  his 
weapon  and  struck  Abraham  down  with  a  single 
blow.  Thirteen  others  fell  by  his  hand  before 
he  passed  the  mallet  to  a  fellow-assassin,  with 
the  words  "  My  arm  fails  me.  Go  on  in  the 
same  way.  I  think  I  have  done  pretty  well." 
In  the  house  where  the  women  and  children 
awaited  their  doom  the  massacre  began  with 
Judith,  a  very  old  and  pious  widow ;  and  in  a 


1 88  THREE    VILLAGES. 

little  space,  the  voices  of  singing  and  of  suppli 
cation  failing  one  by  one,  the  silence  that  fell 
upon  the  place  attested  the  accomplishment  of 
a  crime  which,  for  all  its  circumstances  and  con 
ditions,  must  be  deemed  one  of  the  blackest  in 
history.  The  murderers  scalped  their  victims 
as  they  fell,  and,  when  the  work  was  done,  they 
gathered  their  trophies  together  and  rejoined 
their  comrades.  But  before  nightfall  they  came 
again  to  the  Slaughter-Houses  for  some  reason ; 
and  as  they  entered  that  of  the  men,  one  of  the 
Brethren  who  had  been  stunned  and  scalped, 
but  not  killed,  lifted  himself  upon  his  hands, 
and  turned  his  blood-stained  visage  towards 
them  with  a  ghastly  stare.  They  fell  upon  the 
horrible  apparition,  and  it  sank  beneath  their 
tomahawks  to  rise  no  more ;  and  then,  with  that 
wild  craving  for  excitement  which  seems  the  first 
effect  of  crime  in  the  guilty,  they  set  fire  to  the 
cabins,  and,  withdrawing  to  a  little  distance, 
spent  the  night  in  drunken  revelry  by  the  light 
of  the  burning  shambles. 


GNADENHtfTTEN.  1 3  9 

The  sole  witnesses  of  their  riot  were  two  In 
dian  boys,  who  had  almost  miraculously  escaped 
the  general  butchery,  and  who  afterwards  met  in 
the  woods  outside  of  the  village.  One  of  them 
had  been  knocked  down  and  scalped  with  the 
rest,  and,  reviving  like  the  Brother  who  was 
killed  on  the  return  of  the  murderers  to  the 
Slaughter- Houses,  had  taken  warning  by  his  fate, 
and,  feigning  death,  had  fled  as  soon  as  they 
were  gone.  The  other,  having  concealed  him 
self  beneath  the  house  of  the  women  and  chil 
dren,  remained  there,  the  blood  dripping  down 
upon  him  through  the  floor,  until  nightfall.  A 
companion  who  had  taken  refuge  with  him,  and 
attempted  to  escape  with  him  through  the  cabin 
window,  stuck  fast  and  was  burned  to  death. 

"Thus,"  says  Bishop  Loskiel,  —  "thus  ninety- 
six  persons  magnified  the  name  of  the  Lord  by 
patiently  meeting  a  cruel  death ;  "  and  he  adds 
in  another  place,  with  a  meek  self-denial  of  one 
who  had  fain  claimed  the  greater  glory  for  his 
people,  that  inasmuch  as,  from  the  admissions  of 


19°  THREE    VILLAGES. 

the  murderers,  the  Moravians  were  destroyed 
not  as  Christians,  but  as  Indians,  "  I  will  not 
therefore  compare  them  with  the  martyrs  of  the 
ancient  Church,  who  were  sometimes  sacrificed  in 
great  numbers  to  the  rage  of  their  persecutors,  on 
account  of  their  faith  in  Christ.  But  this  much  I 
can  confidently  assert,  that  these  Christian  In 
dians  approved  themselves  to  the  end  as  stead 
fast  confessors  of  the  truth, .  .  .  and  delivered 
themselves  without  resistance  to  the  cruel  hands 
of  their  bloodthirsty  murderers,  and  thus  bore 
witness  to  the  truth  and  efficacy  of  the  Gospel  of 
Jesus."  Brother  John  Holmes,  writing  like 
Bishop  Loskiel  at  a  distance,  accepts  this  strict 
construction  of  the  position  of  the  Indians  in  the 
Church ;  but  Hecke welder,  whose  life  for  many 
years  had  been  passed  in  the  closest  and  tender- 
est  association  with  these  hapless  victims,  —  who 
had  doubtless  been  the  means  of  conversion  to 
many,  who  had  joined  them  in  marriage,  and 
had  baptized  their  little  ones,  who  had  shared 
their  lowly  joys  and  sorrows,  sat  at  their  boards 


GNADENHtfTTEN.  1 9  I 

and  by  the  beds  of  their  dying.  —  has  no  heart 
for  these  ecclesiastical  niceties,  but  breaks  into 
lamentation  none  the  less  touching  because  the 
words  awkwardly  express  the  anguish  of  his 
spirit :  "  Here  they  were  now  murdered,  together 
with  the  little  children  !  —  the  loving  children 
who  so  harmoniously  raised  their  voices  in  the 
chapel,  at  their  singing-schools,  and  in  their 
parents'  houses,  in  singing  praises  to  the  Lord  ! 
—  those  whose  tender  years,  innocent  counte 
nances,  and  tears  made  no  impression  on  these 
pretended  white  Christians,  were  all  butchered 
with  the  rest  ! " 

What  recoil  of  their  crime,  if  any,  there  was 
upon  the  Gnadenhtitten  murderers  themselves,  is 
not  certainly  known.  A  dim  tradition,  one  of 
the  few  in  the  West  which  have  not  yet  hardened 
into  print,  relates  that  their  leader  in  after  years 
lost  the  popular  favor  that  he  consented  to  buy 
at  so  dear  a  cost.  Old  friends  looked  on  him 
coldly,  and  the  humanity  of  a  younger  genera- 


192  THREE    VILLAGES. 

tion  regarded  him  with  horror.  He  could  never 
be  brought  to  speak  of  the  atrocious  deed,  and 
his  men  shunned  all  talk  of  it.  But  since,  in  the 
year  following  the  massacre,  the  same  leader  and 
men  organized  a  force  to  complete  their  work  of 
murder  by  taking  off  the  remaining  converts  in 
this  refuge  at  Sandusky,  it  may  be  doubted 
whether  the  defeat  that  attended  this  effort,  and 
the  burning  of  such  of  their  number  as  were  cap 
tured  by  the  Indians,  in  avowed  revenge  for  the 
murder  of  the  Christians,  were  not  the  only  re 
grettable  circumstances  connected  in  their  minds 
with  the  Gnadenhiitten  massacre,  until  a  better 
and  more  civilized  public  sentiment  illumined 
them.  Their  act  at  the  time  did  not  lack  de 
fenders  in  Eastern  gazettes,  and  many  years 
afterwards  Heckewelder  tells  that  he  met  and  re 
buked  a  ruffian  who  justified  them,  and  regretted 
that  they  had  not  killed  all  the  Christian  Indians. 
It  is  true  that  the  Gnadenhiitten  murderers 
but  fulfilled  a  long-cherished  purpose  of  the 
backwoodsmen,  which  had  been  formed  and 


GNADENHUTTEN.  193 

attempted  twenty  years  earlier  in  Pennsylvania ; 
and  it  can  be  said,  in  their  defence,  that  they 
had  provocation  as  well  to  cruelty  as  to  mercy. 
The  race  and  color  of  their  victims  represented 
to  them  the  pitiless  savages  who  had  so  often 
desolated  their  homes,  sparing  neither  age  nor 
sex,  and  holding  them  in  continual  wrath  and 
terror;  and  though  many  white  prisoners  owed 
their  welfare  or  their  ransom  to  the  humane 
offices  of  the  Moravians,  the  compulsory  hospi 
tality  of  the  Muskingum  villages  to  the  war 
parties  of  marauding  Indians  was,  as  has  been 
said,  a  constant  offence  to  the  pioneers.  Yet 
this  offence,  at  the  time  of  the  massacre,  had  en 
tirely  ceased,  through  the  removal  of  the  Chris 
tians  to  Sandusky,  and  the  murder  was  utterly 
wanton.  Doubtless  the  slaughter  of  a  few  In 
dians,  more  or  less,  was  not  quite  a  crime  to 
their  tough  consciences  ;  in  the  ethics  of  the  bor 
der,  according  to  Heckewelder,  it  was  no  more 
harm  to  kill  an  Indian  than  a  buffalo,  —  a  senti 
ment  which  with  contemporary  moralists  of  our 


194  THREE    VILLAGES. 

Western  plains  finds  expression  in  the  maxim, 
"  Good  Indians  dead  Indians."  We  can  per 
haps  hardly  arraign  these  murderers  before  any 
tribunal  of  civilized  thought ;  but  their  deed  was 
nevertheless  hideous,  and  it  was  most  lamentable 
in  its  consequences,  for  it  weakened,  if  it  did  not 
break,  the  hope  of  a  whole  race.  It  was  so  hor 
rible,  that  in  the  face  of  it  the  Moravians  never 
regained  full  courage,  nor  the  Indians  full  trust ; 
and  though  the  Moravian  mission  to  the  Del- 
awares  continued  for  some  forty  years  thereafter, 
the  early  vigor  of  the  enterprise  was  never 
restored. 

The  crime,  indeed,  had  the  far-reaching  con 
sequences  of  every  evil  action  ;  it  embittered  the 
warfare  between  the  whites  and  Indians  in  ten 
fold  degree,  and  filled  their  infrequent  truces 
with  hazard  and  doubt.  Nay,  it  seems  to  have 
broken  up  all  foundation  of  faith  as  well  as 
mercy  between  the  two  races ;  many  of  the  con 
verts  themselves  relapsed  into  heathenism,  and 
were  lost  among  the  multitude  of  warriors ;  and 


GNADENI-lUTTEN.  195 

when  the  Moravians  sent  to  seek  these  out  and 
reclaim  them,  they  sometimes  found  their  be 
wildered  minds  filled  with  a  dreadful  and  unim- 
agined  suspicion.  "  I  cannot,"  said  such  a  one 
to  the  Indian  brother  who  discovered  him 
among  the  warlike  savages,  painted  and  armed 
like  the  rest,  — "  I  cannot  but  have  bad  thoughts 
of  our  teachers.  I  think  it  was  their  fault  that 
so  many  of  our  countrymen  were  murdered  at 
Gnadenhiitten.  They  betrayed  us  and  informed 
the  white  people  of  our  being  there,  by  which 
they  were  enabled  to  surprise  us  with  ease.  Tell 
me  now,  is  this  the  truth  or  not?"  This  poor 
soul  had  lost  all  his  children  and  most  of  his 
kindred  in  the  massacre,  and  even  when  brought 
to  see  the  injustice  of  his  suspicions,  he  was  im 
potent  to  repair  the  wrong  or  to  return  to  his 
old  life.  "  I  have  now  a  wicked  and  malicious 
heart,"  he  said,  mournfully,  "  and  therefore  my 
thoughts  are  evil.  As  I  look  outwardly,"  he  con 
tinued,  pointing  to  his  crimson  paint  and  war 
rior's  plumes,  "  so  is  my  heart  within.  What 


196  THREE    VILLAGES. 

would  it  avail  if  I  were  outwardly  to  appear  as  a 
believer,  and  my  heart  were  full  of  evil  ?  "  l 

There  yet  stands  beside  the  Muskingum,  near 
the  site  of  the  hapless  Indian  village,  a  little 
hamlet  bearing  the  pious  name  of  Gnadenhiitten, 
and  its  chapel  bells  still  call  the  Moravian 
Brethren  to  the  worship  of  their  ancient  church. 
But  no  Christian  of  Indian  blood  shares  in  the 
celebration  of  its  rites ;  the  stone  foundations  of 
the  cabins,  some  aged  apple-trees  planted  by 
their  hands,  and  a  few  pathetic  traces  of  the  fire 
that  consumed  the  victims  of  the  massacre,  alone 
remain  to  attest  the  success  and  the  disastrous 
close  of  the  Moravians'  loving  and  devoted 
labors  at  Gnadenhiitten.  The  survivors  of  the 
great  murder  and  of  the  cold  and  famine  of  that 
winter  at  Sandusky  attempted  a  settlement  in 
Canada  under  British  protection,  and  later  built 
a  village  in  Northern  Ohio ;  but  they  always 
longed  to  return  to  the  Muskingum,  to  their  old 

1  Loskiel. 


GNADENHtiTTEN.  197 

fields,  and  to  the  scenes  endeared  to  them  by  so 
many  years  of  happiness  and  consecrated  by  the 
sufferings  of  so  many  of  their  kindred.  Before 
the  close  of  the  century  this  wish  was  gratified 
through  the  Congressional  grant  to  the  Christian 
Indians  of  all  the  lands  assigned  them  by  the 
Delawares;  and  they  came  back  and  founded 
near  the  ruins  of  Schonbrunn  a  new  town  called 
Goshen.  Their  teachers  came  with  them,  and 
Heckewelder,  assisted  by  a  Moravian  Brother, 
gathered  together  the  charred  bones  of  the 
Indian  martyrs,  and  gave  them  Christian  burial.1 
But  the  life  of  the  experiment  was  gone,  as  if 
their  hopes  had  been  buried  in  that  grave. 
Defeat  met  the  renewed  efforts  at  conversion ; 
the  influences  of  the  border  infected  the  broken 
and  disheartened  people ;  Zeisberger  died ;  the 
rigid  laws  of  the  community  were  trampled  upon 
by  the  borderers,  among  whom  the  war  of  1812 
revived  all  the  old  bitterness  against  the  In- 

1  Rev.  Edmund  de  Schweinitz's  letter  from  Gnadenhiitten, 
in  "The  Moravian." 


IQS  THREE    VILLAGES. 

dians ;  drink  was  brought  into  the  village ;  and, 
before  the  removal  of  the  community  to  Canada 
in  1823,  the  spectacle  of  drunken  converts  in 
the  streets  bore  witness,  if  not  to  the  inherent 
viciousness  of  the  Indian,  at  least  to  the  white 
man's  success  in  tempting  and  depraving  him. 


University  Press  :  John  Wilson  &  Son,  Cambridge. 


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